


Beholden

by IntrospectiveInquisitor



Series: The Eyes Have It [3]
Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Bill and Dipper's Excellent Adventures, Blood and Gore, Body Horror, Consensual Sex, Depression, Eldritch Bill Cipher, Established Relationship, Explicit Sexual Content, Hallucinations, Human Bill Cipher, Mental Health Issues, Mental Instability, Other, Past Character Death, Recovery, Self-Hatred, Suicidal Thoughts, World Travel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-21
Updated: 2017-06-10
Packaged: 2018-09-18 23:21:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 14
Words: 32,560
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9407384
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IntrospectiveInquisitor/pseuds/IntrospectiveInquisitor
Summary: ON HIATUSGravity Falls, once a childhood haven for Dipper Pines, has become marred by filth and blood. With severed familial ties in his grasp and the weight of a corpse on his back, the only thing holding him above the tide is the demon that destroyed his life, but gave him something new and fragile in return.Bound by flesh and forever barred from omniscience, Bill is left to flounder in uncertainty as he struggles to come to terms with his own limitations. Feeling alienated by his humanity even as he is consumed by it, his only choice is to rely on the human that had warped him so drastically.Tethered by strings of twisted morality and growing affection, they travel to every corner of the world to peel back grimy secrets, some of which had escaped even the unfettered gaze of the All Seeing Eye.A continuation of Bright Eyes and Providence. Be sure to read those first!





	1. Home

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Be sure to contact me at http://introspectiveinquisitor.tumblr.com/ if you have any questions/wanna chat about the story/series!

The scent of home was one that Dipper could never forget. He knew, with what vestiges of rationality stubbornly clung to the inside of his skull, that scent was closely linked with human memory. It had a way of inducing nostalgia and fond remembrance like few other things could. The scent of balmy breezes and a freshly mowed lawn, of hardy pine and musty pages.. the scent of self-neglect, and rotting aspirations... they were all homes to Dipper, in one way or another. They were all locations he could recall being truly comfortable, truly safe, truly at peace, for any length of time. He should have known that none of them would ever last.

He should have known that he'd ruin everything. Should have known he'd be incapable, be a failure, never amount to anything more than a nuisance. Youthful aspirations of being some world renowned paranormal investigator had been seared to ashes. Humbler hopes of being a writer, of using the fanciful imaginings that had always wisped through his head to paint a vibrant world for others to enjoy, crumbled into dust. The feeble, clinging desperation of having a family, having people he could love and cherish, coldly slaughtered like a squealing hog.

And then, born of the blood and soot and dust that caked every inch of his reality, the twisted hands of a beast with just one eye had reached. They had reached to smash, to twist, to torment. And then, when the bark had crumbled and the wood had splintered, they reached for something else: to embrace, to nurture, to mend, to understand. And Dipper reached out in turn, because there was nothing left.

He clung to those hands with terminal desperation, and watched everything go up in flames around him. From the end of a life to the end of the world, those hands had transitioned from instruments of torture to the fumbling hands of a companion, a cohort, a comfort. Their bruising grip became a touch of fond familiarity, and Dipper found himself reaching out to them more and more. He had made his choice, chose to push aside his fear and misgivings for something he hoped was right.

And so had Bill. The Master of the Mind, All Seeing Eye, expert manipulator and demonic beast from beyond the stars, had chosen Dipper above all else. To be honest, he still didn't know why, and wasn't sure he ever would. All he could do was hold on, and hope to never be let go.  
\--  
"Ohhh BOY it is GOOD to be back!" Bill's unnecessary shout echoed through the empty interior of the house, the demon entirely ignorant of the wince his exclamation brought to his companion's face. "And I actually mean it this time, too! Now that Sixer and Fez are off our backs and Molta is blasted across the multiverse, we can finally enjoy some quality time together!"

"What does that entail, exactly?" Dipper droned, too exhausted to ache at the mention of his great uncles. "Because as far as I'm concerned, none of the time we've spent together can be considered 'quality'."

"Pine Tree, you wound me!" Bill dramatically threw himself at the smaller human, ignoring the startled yelp as they both toppled to the floor. "Don't you remember that time we shoplifted? Or when we trespassed on private property to go swimming? Or what about when we broke a bunch of stuff at the fun fair?" Bill paused, and relinquished one hand from its task of holding down a squirming Pine Tree to begin stroking his chin in thought. "Now that I think about it, most of the fun stuff we did was illegal. Which can only mean-"

"Please, no more breaking the law. We already cut it close enough with the Aztec gold smuggling," Dipper reminded him in a tone that was a strange mixture of stern and pleading. "Also, can you at least wait to tackle me somewhere that I have furniture to break my fall? I'd rather avoid another trip to the hospital." Dipper feebly wormed his way out from under Bill's lanky form so that he could stand back up, and had the feeling he only managed to escape because the demon willed it.

Bill oozed up onto his own feet, towering and menacing and sporting a razor edged grin. "If you wanted me in bed with you so badly, you could have just asked." True to form, Pine Tree immediately tried to sputter some protest, scarce color rising to his sallow face. Bill choked down a cackle in favor of an innocent smile, packed to the brim with needle sharp teeth. "What? Here I am, both trying to honor your wishes AND suggest some fun we could have that isn't illegal, and THAT'S how you react? I think I'm the one that's gonna end up in the hospital, because I've just come down with a case of a broken heart." Bill swooned in place, one hand pressed over his heart and another splayed knuckle down across his forehead.

Dipper snorted at the melodramatic display, the corners of his lips turning up in amusement against his will as the color faded from his face. The thought that Bill was being ridiculous for Dipper's own benefit briefly crossed his mind, but he was too tired to analyze the meaning behind such a realization. Maybe he'd do something to show his appreciation when he wasn't dead on his feet from days of driving. "I mean, my bed is a lot more comfortable than a hospital bed, but if you'd rather spend your time there..." Dipper turned to trudge away, barely making it two steps before Bill was rushing up behind him. Not that it took much actual rushing; Bill covered three of Dipper's strides in one.

"Haha hey let's not be too hasty," Bill began in a faux-nonchalant tone, tossing his arm around Pine Tree's shoulders and reeling him in. "You and that bed go together like bread and peanut butter: practical, but bland. Clearly you need me in the mix to make things interesting."

"We can make things 'interesting' _after_  I get some sleep. And you need rest, too, despite how much I'm sure you'd love to keep running on empty." Dipper began the trek up the stairs, made slightly awkward by the body pressed against his side. Despite being built like a corn stalk, Bill managed to take up an ungodly amount of space.

"Well, DUH. What ELSE would I be doing? It's not like you'll be awake to entertain me, which means I have to pass time some other way." Bill slipped ahead of the human to throw open the bedroom door with a flourish, not missing the fondly exasperated little smile that Pine Tree wore. His own face twisted into a pleased grin, and he began idly stripping on the approach to the bed. As much as he adored adorning himself in richly colored and finely tailored fabrics, they weren't ideal to wear to bed. He also much preferred the touch of Dipper's clammy skin against his own bare meatsuit.

"Nice to know you have your priorities in line," Dipper barely managed around a yawn, his dry snark lost to exhaustion. He managed to kick off his shoes and rid himself of his rumpled shirt before falling into bed, groaning as he sunk into the well used mattress. The security of cool sheets and a heavy comforter had been dearly missed, no matter how childish he felt whilst huddled beneath their embrace. He knew that they provided no real protection from the inside of his own head, or from his own hands, but they made it easier to pretend. Curling up in bed and deluding himself had become something of an art form, in those months when he had been left to his own devices. Hopefully it was an art he'd never have to revisit.

The leaden tug of sleep anchored him down to the mattress, and he croaked out a yawn before sinking his entire weight onto the padded springs. He wanted nothing more than to drift away into blissful unconsciousness, but something still kept him tethered to the surface of awakening. "Would you get in here already?" Dipper mumbled, well aware of the presence looming at the side of the bed. He still needed a security more formidable than sheets and blankets. A thing of solid, wiry muscle and a shark's maw, long and twisted and burning with celestial brilliance. A thing he had almost lost himself to. A thing that had helped him find himself. A thing he could trust to lose himself in. He might not ever be able to admit it anywhere but the deepest pits of his mind, where fingers of his subconscious lulled him to slumber, but he would always know. He would always know that he truly felt safe in the arms of Bill Cipher.

"I thought you'd never ask!" Bill brushed aside an odd feeling (a weight lifting Pine Tree still wanted him close everything was okay) and slipped under the covers with the ease of a python. He did a fairly good impression of one as well, wrapping his limbs around the body beside him in a constricting vice. To have something warm and pulsing, wholly alive and in his arms, it was... No, Bill realized suddenly. Intoxicating was the wrong word. Perhaps when the fragile thing in his arms had been his favorite toy it might have been intoxicating, the noxious fumes of pain and turmoil he inflicted leaving him heady and giddy. But now, to hold something with care, to truly cherish his favorite human... Bill Cipher did not yet know the word to describe holding someone he loved, for it was something he had never done before. But perhaps, with Pine Tree's help, he would be able to find one.

Two bodies pressed together, sheltered from the pale grasp of moonlight, and drifted into a world beyond the reach of cold stars.


	2. Dreaming

For the first time in over one trillion years, Bill Cipher dreamed. The quiet, hazy bedroom fell away in in a blink that may have lasted either one moment or a thousand. A monumental consciousness that had been hacked apart and crammed into the limitations of a human mind reeled as it was made a prisoner of chemicals and electricity. The last vestiges of awareness faded, and everything c h a n g e d

The world was a bloody smear of coagulating hatred, painted an ugly boiling red with a barbed wire brush. Iron chains pulled and strained, flaking rust as they were shaken by the might of the beast they so tenuously contained. A howling thing, black with rage and blazing the world with streaks of screaming yellow. A thousand hands scrabbled and clawed at crumbling manacles, the frantic limbs withering away before any progress could be made. Every maddened thrash was met with the creaking of strained metal, but exhaustion overtook effort before the links could snap. A world devouring maw shattered countless teeth on unyielding metal, the bitter flavor of rust and blood only fueling its loathing. A burning eye stared through the haze of red, and searched for anything that could aid in its escape.

And just above the surface, it found another. A mangled polygon, bent and fuzzing at the edges even as it hung suspended in the air, perfectly free to do as it pleased. A fractured pupil winked down at the imprisoned beast, shrieking cackles rippling through the sludge. Warped edges twisted and blinked as their signal was interrupted, leaving behind temporary smudges of glaring color. It drifted down towards the surface of the prison, reaching a spindly, three fingered hand down as if to touch the muck.

The beast below clawed through the sludge with a writhing limb, one that barely maintained physicality as it reached, strained, pleaded for contact with the being beyond, the one on the other side-and then the polygon raised its middle finger, bursting into static infused cackles before floating away. Consumed by utter rage the beast howled, dragged lower and lower into the depths even as it reached out. Its own darkness was encroached on by pure void, swallowing up every last trace, blotting out the final impression of color, and then-

Ì̸̀͜͠M̸̸͞P͟É̡́͜͡RF̨͘E͏̴C̷͡T ̛͞

Bill was jolted back into consciousness with a ragged gasp, surprise blossoming on his face. He attempted to reach up and feel around to be sure his face actually existed, only to realize his arm had been taken hostage by a clingy Pine Tree. The human had taken to it like a stuffed animal, pressing the spindly appendage to his chest and leaning his cheek onto it. Bill certainly found it a spirit lifting sight, even in light of his dream-polygon-self being a huge tool. At least, he was pretty sure that had been a representation of himself. Maybe next time he could have Pine Tree sit in on his dream, and then give him the play-by-play after he woke up. "Hey Pine Tree, guess what? You get to be my new dream watcher! What's that?" Bill asked incredulously, despite the lack of response, "You want to work without pay? How kind and generous of you! Oh, and you'll even let me forge your signature on a legally binding contract-Pine Tree you are just too much."

Dipper groaned as the last vestiges of peaceful slumber slipped away, and he was dragged back into reality by the sound of a much too loud voice. He made out a few snippets of actual words, and attempted to slur out a response, knowing he would get no reprieve otherwise. "M' handwriting's too messy, 'mpossible t' forge," he mumbled into his borrowed arm pillow.

Bill laughed delightedly, pleased to have earned a response without any complaining. "Well, I'll certainly say that it takes a special kind of talent to replicate a signature as atrocious as yours!" Bill absentmindedly raised his arm, only to find a human attached to it. "Ooh, looks like I caught a big one! Might be hard to eat around all the bones, though." Bill pressed a finger between Dipper's ribs with enough force to make the man yelp, eyes opening a fraction wider as wakefulness was forced upon him.

"I thought we had gotten past you trying to eat people," Dipper muttered sourly, trying to stifle his embarrassment at being caught with Bill's arm in his grasp. He released his grip posthaste, drooping over into a barely awake slouch once he was no longer being kept upright. "What time is it?"

"Half past people eater o'clock," Bill replied in a non-answer, before he actually bothered to grope for Dipper's phone, lost amidst the sheets. He eventually pulled up the lockscreen, and flashed the brightly shining 5:47 AM at his Pine Tree. "Almost sunrise! What's that human saying? 'Early to bed, early demise'? Something along those lines, anyway."

"We both know that isn't the saying." Dipper angled the painfully bright screen away from his face, struggling to even keep his eyes open. "Why did you wake me up at five in the morning, exactly?"

"It's because I had a dr-" Bill stemmed the reflexive flow of words, wondering if he should even bother sharing the fact that he'd experienced his first dream. His poor, paranoid little Pine Tree would surely take it as something negative, being as his incredibly handsome and charismatic paramour was supposed to be a weaver of dreams instead of a reciever of them. Bill was struck with the realization that that probably _was_  something to panic over, but pushed the thought aside. They'd only just made it home after a... series of rocky events, and Bill wouldn't dump more suffering on Pine Tree if he could help it. "A dr... dramazing idea for how we could spend the day!"

"'Dramazing' isn't a word, you know-" Dipper's correction was interrupted by a hand pressing over his mouth, and a maw full of gleaming teeth being shoved into his field of view.

"HAHA ANYWAY why don't we make some breakfast, Pine Tree? Maybe things won't even catch on fire this time!" Bill stretched his grin to inhuman lengths, his voice smooth and casual but his expression a gross exaggeration of good cheer.

Dipper raised an eyebrow at the strange behavior, but reluctantly decided to chalk it up to Bill being strange and enigmatic as usual. He was too tired to analyze the demon, anyway. "Bill, we've been out of state for two weeks; I'm sure most of my food is bad by now."

"Oooh, does that mean we get to rob another store?" Despite the lack of lighting in the room, Bill's eye somehow managed to sparkle with malevolent glee.

"No, we aren't doing _anything_  illegal. I'd really prefer avoiding any run-ins with the law." Dipper shivered at the thought of frigid county jails, although that also might have been due to the air conditioner switching on. He groaned and rolled over to the edge of the bed, feet hovering over the surely icy hardwood. "Since I can already tell you aren't going to let me get back to sleep, you obviously wouldn't mind going to get the shower started, right?" Rather than sugary sweet in an attempt at persuasion, his tone was dry with expectation.

"Yeah, yeah. Geez, I wake you up early ONE TIME forthetwentyseventhtime and suddenly I'm your bath attendant?" Bill slid out from under the covers like a wriggling insect, his stick thin limbs only furthering the comparison. "Although it'll be good to cleanse my carapace after being stuck in your gross car for the last few days."

"It's only gross because _you_ keep leaving food in it," Dipper argued halfheartedly, flinching as the sensitive soles of his feet made contact with the icy floor. "And then you don't tell me about it until it starts to reek."

"Well it's not my problem until that point, now is it?" Bill countered with his own brand of impeccable logic, flipping on the bedroom's light switch on his way out the door. "Besides, I only have one eye! How can you expect me to reach for things with no depth perception? Honestly, you're so insensitive, Pine Tree." The teasing lilt in his voice paired well with his smirk, which he flashed over one narrow shoulder before slipping out into the hallway.

"Yes, how insensitive of me to not take your 'disability' into account when I ask you to not leave food to rot in my car," Dipper replied so dryly that the pipes might not even function when Bill turned the shower on. He staggered over to where they had thrown their bags after fully undressing, digging through for outfits that would be acceptable to wear out in public. Of course, his and Bill's perceptions of such matters differed greatly, and thus he begrudgingly picked out a hideous yellow affair for his demon roommate.

The sound of pipes creaking was swiftly followed by water splashing against tile, and then Bill's voice rose to drown both of them out. "Hey, since I only have one eye, does that make me legally half blind? Could I register for half of a seeing eye dog? Y'think they'd cut it lengthwise, or-"

"Can we please not discuss mutilating service animals, thanks," Dipper croaked across the hall, just loud enough to be heard. His throat had been sore for days, and he briefly hoped he hadn't come down with any sort of illness. Maybe he just wasn't hydrating properly. He needed to remember to take better care of himself; wasting away wouldn't do him any good, and Bill's understanding of human needs was limited at best, which meant Dipper needed to remain vigilant concerning his own health. At the very least, Bill took every opportunity to load both of their plates with food, uncaring of any of Dipper's protests. Forcing down an acceptable amount of nourishment was something else entirely, but he'd work up to that (hopefully) eventually.

"Okay, then what SHOULD we talk about mutilating?" From the reverberations of the demon's shrieking voice, Dipper assumed he was already in the shower. He slowly trudged into the bathroom himself, separating their outfits on the counter and noting the faint sheen of moisture on the mirror; he found himself thankful for how quickly his water heated.

"Nothing, preferably. Can't we just discuss what we're gonna have for breakfast?" Dipper could practically feel the demon's attention snag on the mention of food. For all his complaints, Bill certainly had no qualms about stuffing his face. Dipper climbed into the shower alongside the pale, alien figure, smirking at the way Bill had to duck to actually make it under the spray.

"Hopefully nothing too flammable! Fire is less fun when you have to put it out, I've come to realize." Bill flicked a bit of water at Pine Tree's face, unleashing delighted cackles in response to the way it scrunched up in annoyance. "But other than that, how about.. eggs! And peppers, and tomatoes, oh and maybe those buttery flaky pastries, and-"

"Let's not make too much at once. I'm not much of a cook, and you... set fire to most things. I could probably handle some tomato and pepper omelets, though, and I know they have pre-made biscuits at the place down the street.." Dipper trailed off as he began tallying a list of things they'd need for breakfast, as well as cataloguing the things most likely to have gone bad while they were gone so that he could replace them. He had just gotten through plotting an optimal route through the nearest grocery store that he _hadn't_  robbed when he noticed the leering visage inches from his face. To his credit, he managed to stifle a scream in the form of a high pitched yelp, and didn't even hit his head when he jumped backwards. "Do you _really_ have to do that?!"

Bill cackled in response, quashing the tiny inklings of disappointment when Pine Tree's thoughtful expression dissolved. "Of course! How could I resist looking at you when you're thinking so hard? It's one of my favorite expressions of yours!" Bill punctuated the statement by taking one of Pine Tree's cheeks in his hand, mushing it back and forth.

Dipper idly pulled away from the hand manipulating his face, registering Bill's words beyond his indignation. "..One of your favorites, huh?" He felt an odd flutter in his chest at the knowledge that _anything_  he did could be considered one of Bill's 'favorites'.

"Well.. yeah! You've got a whole bunch of 'em! The way your eyebrows furrow when I say something annoying, and that sleepy way you glare at me when I wake you up before sunrise, and how you try desperately to pretend you aren't laughing at my impeccable sense of humor, and the way you smile when-" Bill paused and cleared his throat, registering the misty eyed look he was receiving. He immediately attempted to backpedal. "I-I mean, it's just.. it's nothing compared to MY smile, of course, but the way your eyes light up and you look alive and happy and-...I uh, it's alright." Bill plastered on a crooked half-grin, nervous flutters assaulting his chest cavity.

Dipper swallowed a scratchy lump in his throat, though it did nothing to quell the throbbing blood under his skin. He searched Bill's face for any sign of dishonesty, and found only insecurity. "..I-I like your smiles too, Bill. When they're meant for me. When they let me know everything is okay. When they say that you're proud, and pleased, and.. content." Dipper raised a trembling hand, and did what he could to lace it with one bearing eight fingers. "..You know I love you, right? I.. I meant it, when I said it before. M..maybe something's wrong with me for thinking so, but... I do love you." The distant sound of pounding water suddenly rushed in his ears, a turbulent torrent that eroded his feeble struts of confidence. He lowered his eyes to the floor, and squeezed the hand in his grasp for any sign of reassurance.

Bill felt his heart slam in his chest, even as a pleasing warmth settled in cozily alongside it. He leaned down and pressed his forehead against one marked by the stars themselves, resting his arm around a sickly thin torso and squeezing gently. "..I love you too, Pine Tree. I'm not sure I even know what that word means, but... when I think of you, it's the first one that comes to mind."

They stood together in the forgotten spray of the shower, lost in precious moments of contentment, and existed.


	3. Sickness

Dipper began shivering the moment he was freed of the steamy confines of his shower. He made a mental note to adjust the air conditioner so as to avoid freezing to death. He briefly conjured the image of himself frozen in a block of ice, and almost managed to quirk a smile at the cartoonish absurdity. It was so much harder to laugh. He normally attributed Bill's greatly polarizing quantities of laughter as a result of extreme mania, but briefly wondered if the demon truly did find himself that funny. At least someone had a sense of humor.

That same someone had become enamoured with drawing morbid amalgams of polygons and body parts on the fogged up mirror, leaving Dipper a scant moment to think in (relative) silence. He silently bemoaned his inevitable fate of having to stuff himself back into his car after having just been freed of it. The mechanical motions of toweling himself off were rusty and sluggish, and he frowned at the dull ache in his joints; yet another reason he'd rather avoid the car. If he were stuck with any other megalomaniacal dream demon he would have just ordered groceries online to be delivered, but he knew that Bill absolutely would not sit still when he could be out terrorizing the populace and vandalizing things instead. He briefly reflected on the fact that such notions brought forth feelings of exasperated endearment, instead of the much more apt horror he should have been feeling. Just another sign of his deteriorated mental state, Dipper dismissed. His love for Bill was a sickness; a festering phantom puppeting his limbs and suffusing him into something unrecognizable. To be endeared, to be charmed, to be infatuated and beloved and adored by a murderer, a raving maniac, a walking abomination... Well, Dipper reflected, he hadn't ever been very good at making healthy decisions for himself.

Bill hummed a discordant tune to himself, made even more fractured by the frequent bouts of laughter he exploded into. He was finally starting to understand why humans were so obsessed with smearing pigments on canvas; expressing himself visually was so visceral! He added a quaint little bowtie to his rendition of Thomas Jefferson's severed head, kept aloft by his own inflated eyeballs. Bill frowned as he realized that there was no neck stump to keep the bow tie attached, so he gave it its own little pair of floating eyeballs so it could keep up with its wearer. He cackled akin to a swamp hag, doodling little triangles around the head. He peered out of the corner of his vision once he'd died down from his fit, and found Pine Tree standing stock still, clutching a damp towel in one hand with his hair still dripping on the floor. Bill peered a little closer, and recognized Pine Tree's 'I'm deep in thought and if you yell really loud it'll startle me' expression.

However, as hilarious as it would have been to see that expression transition into 'I am very startled at the moment but I'm slowly becoming annoyed as realization strikes', Bill decided to take a different sort of initiative. He removed his own towel, which he found to be almost unbearably soft after using motel ones, and began drying Pine Tree's hair for him. It had become such a tangled mess over the months! Not that Bill minded, or anything; any form of chaos was pleasing to the eye, and it was an extremely stimulating tactile experience to run his fingers through it. He still had brief fantasies of tearing it out, chunk by chunk, peeling the scalp flesh and caressing bare skull-but he was better than that, wasn't he? Hadn't he changed for the 'better', quote unquote?

For all his bloated ego and immense confidence helped Bill keep a grasp on himself, he struggled immensely with understanding the new and confusing emotions that had so thoroughly ensnared him. He.. he wondered what would have happened, had he refused, had he made his power truly absolute, and eradicated the last stains that threatened his glory...but he would have been ALONE. And that was no longer acceptable. Despite whatever regrets or second thoughts might linger, Bill had made his choice. He'd ousted himself from infinite power, infinite knowledge, infinite possibility: all for one human.

A human that had begun rising from his self inflicted stupor, the realization of firm, soothing hands and a soft towel dawning on him. Dipper sighed in hesitant pleasure, eyes sliding shut as the repetitive motions briefly overpowered the chill lingering on his skin. "..We should probably get dressed and head out soon, if we want to beat the morning rush." Part of him would rather sleep through the rest of the day and pick up the bare essentials at a convenience store in the middle of the night, but he couldn't-he had to _try_  and reinsert himself into some sort of feasible schedule.

"This wouldn't be a problem if you'd bought one of those monster truck things like I suggested, Pine Tree. Then you could just flatten everyone in your way!" Bill snickered and flung his towel in a random direction, pinching the side of Pine Tree's nose as he passed and dodging the hand that swiped at him. "Just imagine it; all those annoying Sunday drivers, crushed into tomato paste!" He snatched his clothes off the counter, meticulously adhering them to his person.

"First of all, those are show vehicles, and I'm pretty sure the cars they crush at the shows aren't as sturdy as actual, safety tested automobiles. Second, that would be vehicular manslaughter, which is illegal." Part of Dipper wondered why he even bothered trying to apply rational thought to any of Bill's inane and destructive suggestions, but the lingering frost of bleak silence reminded him. He lazily slid into his own clothes, putting forth the bare minimum effort to make sure they at least weren't backwards or inside out. Even with his skin covered, he still felt uncomfortably chilled. "Hey, is it cold in here? Like, beyond the normal temperature differentials resulting from exiting the shower while wet?"

Bill aborted his planned spiel about the many outweighing pros of crushing people to death underneath oversized tires to consider Pine Tree's inquiry. "Not that I can tell! But maybe I'm still not used to these nerve endings. I could be on fire for all I know!"

Dipper quirked a little half smile, and pushed himself to ignore the discomfort. He had more important things to focus on. "You'd probably laugh even if you did notice."

"Well, I know one way we can find out!" Bill, ignorant to the bursting horror on Pine Tree's face, sprinted out of the bathroom and took a flying leap down the stairs on his way to the stove. Dipper cringed as he heard numerous crashes and bangs, before a deafening silence settled-"HAHA, I ALWAYS FORGET HOW FUN THAT IS! ALSO, I'M OKAY!"

Dipper made a solemn promise to himself to never introduce Bill to slapstick cartoons.  
\--  
Despite all the effort Dipper put forth towards ignoring his worsening aches and his developing shiver, his sheer mental will proved insufficient in curbing his oncoming illness. The mild summer air felt as though he'd been stuffed into a meat locker, and his attempts to endure the air conditioned grocery store were akin to standing in an arctic blizzard without clothing. He held himself in one shaking piece for the duration of the brief shopping trip, barely possessing the energy to prevent Bill from wreaking havoc.

Fortunately, Bill was much too enamoured with thoughts of breakfast and descriptions of grotesque menu options to even consider another heist. It was only after they had exited the store that Bill realized something was amiss, watching pointedly as Pine Tree struggled to lift even a single grocery bag with his trembling noodle arms. "Jeez, I know you don't have much going on in the muscle department, but this is sad even for you!"

"H-hey!" Dipper began defensively, before realizing there was absolutely nothing he could say in his defense. His feverish flush deepened, and he forced his aching arms to toss the bag into his trunk. "I think I'm getting sick," he muttered, in a desperate attempt to change the subject.

"Sick, eh? With what? Measles? Smallpox? Typhoid? Dysentery? Bubonic plague?" Bill could have listed at least a hundred other deadly afflictions off the top of his head, but thought it prudent to stop before Pine Tree's face turned an even deeper shade of the sickly red it had become.

"No, none of those-Bill we have vaccines now, people don't get those anymore. It's probably just a flu strain." Dipper coughed into his forearm, and winced as he felt something in his chest rattle. "I'll be fine.. probably. I just need rest."

"Pfft, BORING!" Bill exclaimed, dumping the last load of groceries into the trunk before slamming it closed with both hands. "But fortunate, because I like you alive and coherent. So what do you need? Leeches? Blood letting? Blood letting VIA leeches?" Pine Tree cringed as if Bill had already begun applying leeches to him, and Bill laughed uproariously. "HA, just kidding! I know that stuff doesn't work. Who do you think made it up, after all?"

"Looking past your stifling of the advancement of medical sciences," Dipper began dryly, attempting to stifle a cough, "I really would like to get home and go to bed to sleep this off."

"But what about breakfast? What's the point of cooking disgusting human food if I don't get to pretend like I'm going to light things on fire so you'll make those cute little panicking noises?!" Bill unleashed a despairing wail as if the world were crashing down without him having any hand in it.

"I could lie on the couch and watch you from there?" Dipper suggested wearily, already climbing into the passenger seat, which was a painful affair in and of itself. "You're driving, by the way."

Bill screeched in offense as his audience abandoned him, and slunk in through the driver's side door to begin applying the proper admonishments. "First of all, rude, walking away while I'm still talking at you. Second of all, that's just not the same! I need an unwilling participant in my shenanigans, and you're the only one for me, Pine Tree!"

"As flattered as I am, I think I'll take a rain check." Dipper swallowed down the awful tickling in his throat as he reached to switch on the car's heater, and cranked it up significantly. "Wake me up when we get home," he mumbled, curling his aching limbs together and attempting to lean comfortably against the car door.

Bill opened his maw to unleash some sort of affronted shriek, only to pause at the sight of Pine Tree's full body tremors. He pushed the stew of annoyance and concern down his gullet, and pulled out of the parking lot. That was fine. He could just cook by himself. Why did he need Pine Tree to pay attention to him constantly, anyway? Not that he DID, or anything, but.. Bill growled and dug his fingers into the steering wheel, resisting the urge to run other vehicles off the road to vent his frustration. Not that he was frustrated just because Pine Tree would rather SLEEP than cook with him. Of course not. He was perfectly fine.

Despite his millenia of experience lying to others, Bill had never been much good at lying to himself. 


	4. Demise, True or Otherwise

In a turn of events that even Bill Cipher could not have predicted, being left to his own devices at the wheel of a deadly hunk of metal did not lead to any sort of destruction, wanton or otherwise. His flaring frustrations dimmed to embers with each miserable sound Pine Tree produced in his dozing state, and the simple responsibility of driving home gave him a much needed sense of control. For as much as Bill could fill every inch of himself and the air around him with carefully constructed inanity, it couldn't last forever. Trapped in a meat body, even he had developed some sort of limit, even if it had taken him four days to reach it. He'd put forth every ounce of effort into projecting inhuman bombast and mania, clouding his own head with what he WANTED to think about, instead of the lurking strings of thought that slithered through his head.

But his energy was not infinite. His presence was not absolute. His power was not complete. And Bill Cipher was growing weary. He could feel something heavy in his bones, tugging him down and reaffirming their true weight beneath his skin. He could no longer hold himself above limitations. He had rebuked the infinite, and... he didn't know what to do anymore. His only clear goal was helping Pine Tree, but what came after, if he ever even managed it? What happened when his meat expired, left to rot in a hole in the ground, or be consumed by heat? Would he be left to inhabit it, forever aware of his rotting corpse? Or... would that be it? Would he scream and howl as awareness slipped away, and was consumed by never ending darkness? He almost laughed at how disgustingly HUMAN his fears had become.

He pulled into the front driveway of (their) Pine Tree's home, and stared blankly at the steering wheel beneath his hands, deaf to the idling of the engine. Would he age, as well? Become wrinkled and useless and confused? Would his mind deteriorate until everything that was left of the legacy of Bill Cipher had vanished? Blistering heat built behind his eyes, and he pushed his swirling fears aside. Bill Cipher was forever; he would never be forgotten, never be felled, never lose himself. He was power absolute, the All Seeing Eye and Master of the Mind. He wouldn't.. he couldn't... it didn't matter, Bill concluded. None of it mattered. He would live as he always had, taking what he wanted and doing whatever pleased him. If he was destined to rot, then he would carve his name into the earth so deeply that none could ever oust it.

A ragged cough from the passenger seat proved a welcome distraction to Bill's thoughts, and he turned to find Pine Tree had deteriorated during the relatively short drive. His cheeks were flushed with feverish heat, and the rest of him had paled even further, a clammy, sickly color that Bill likened to his own skin tone. He knew human sickness was usually fatal (and hilarious), but Pine Tree had SAID he wasn't dying. He would be fine, right? "Hey, wakey wakey eggs and other assorted ingredients that we bought!"

Pine Tree mumbled into his seat belt, a line of drool trailing down it. Bill frowned and reached out to pull Pine Tree's face closer to his own. His eyelids sluggishly pulled open, revealing slightly glazed eyes that stared, uncomprehending, at the demon's concerned visage. "Bill..?"

"Who else would it be?" The demon winked charmingly, the action slightly impeded by his eyepatch. "C'mon, let's get you inside. I'm sure you'd rather make gross noises there than in here!" Bill unlocked Pine Tree's seat belt and tugged on a trembling arm, which almost burned under his fingertips. "Sheesh, you sure are hot! Did you light yourself on fire when I wasn't looking? Talk about a hypocrite!" He undid his own seat belt, leaning over to push the passenger side door open. He contorted his limbs in such a manner as to squeeze past Pine Tree without losing his grip, and pulled the feverish human out with him.

His shivers intensified tenfold as he was ousted from the toasty car interior and left to endure the slight breeze, goose bumps rising on his arm beneath Bill's own hand. "Neat, I've never seen that before! Are you gonna turn inside out?" He waited a short moment for a response, and his eager grin faltered when a wheezing cough was the only response. "Wow okay, I should definitely get you inside. What would the neighbors think if they heard you make such noises? Hah, neigh-bors. That one down the street is pretty horse faced, gotta say!"

Bill continued rambling as he scooped Pine Tree into his arms, the feverish body limp and malleable in his grip. He ignored a spike of worry that welled in his gut, and lengthened his strides towards the front door. The interior of the house proved even more a detriment to Pine Tree's condition, the cool air eliciting a miserable whimper. Bill almost dropped him when Pine Tree nuzzled into his chest, chasing after his warmth. "Wow, you uh.. normally yell a lot when I pick you up like this. I'll just... put you on the couch! And get you blankets! That's a thing sick humans need, right?"

Pine Tree mumbled something that might have been a response, syllables slurred and muffled by Bill's sweater. "Yeah okay let's just..." Bill pretended nothing was wrong as he hurried over to the couch, lowering Pine Tree onto it and draping the quilt thrown over the back onto his shivering form. Pine Tree clutched it like a life line, and Bill removed his shoes before he left any marks on the couch. He'd rather avoid a lecture when Pine Tree was feeling better. "So uh... what exactly do you... need?"

Dipper coughed into his arm, peering miserably up at Bill from beneath the quilt, which had been pulled all the way up to his nose. "M' cold n' thirsty," he mumbled, a bit of awareness returning to his glazed eyes. His voice was thick and scratchy, and he had trouble even producing sound in the first place.

"Right, more blankets and water! That should be easy enough!" Bill laughed much too loudly, nerves pulled taut. He rushed into the kitchen, filling the tallest glass he could find with ice water. He thanked himself for designing such disgustingly long legs as he cleared the distance between himself and Pine Tree in record time. He set the glass down (without spilling! Bill would have to remember to pat himself on the back for that later) and wasted no time in rushing towards the guest bedroom, where he himself had slept a scant few times before invading Pine Tree's room permanently. He ripped off every scrap of sheets and covers from the bed, ignoring the bare mattress as he stalked back over and dumped the load of fabrics on top of Pine Tree. "Okay, there we go. Are you better yet?"

Dipper produced a scratchy mewl, pulling the fabrics around over his shoulders and tucking his feet as far under them as they would go. The blissful warmth soon became almost scorching, but he found it preferable to the bitter cold. "Takes time," he croaked, daring to reach one arm out to pull the glass of water to his lips. He was surprised he didn't end up dropping the glass from how badly his hand trembled. Dipper drank as slowly as he could force himself to, clearing a quarter of the glass before he clumsily set it back on the coffee table. He recalled Bill's presence a moment later, peering up at the horrifically vexed demon. "'ll be 'kay, go get 'th food," he managed in as reassuring a tone as he could muster. The effect was broken by a hacking cough, which took a fair few seconds to die down.

"You sure you're not gonna combust while I'm gone, or something?" Bill's tone was sarcastic, but the concern on his face was painfully clear. He fidgeted unrelentingly with his bow tie, leaving it crooked no matter how many times he readjusted it. He just couldn't stop staring at how small and feeble Pine Tree looked, buried beneath a heap of fabric and flushed with fever.

"Mhmm.." Dipper murmured, losing focus for a moment. His eye caught on Bill's hair, which had grown over the time he'd been around. He dazedly imagined the demon with long hair, a chaotic mess of tresses, tousled by solar winds. Strands would hang like curving scythes, and locks would curl into ringlets. Bill would laugh and his hair would bounce, shifting between tar black and sunshine gold like a shimmering waterfall. A tiny smile tugged at his lips, barely visible beneath the hem of the quilt. "Y'r beautiful," he mumbled, snuggling into the couch cushions and staring at Bill in dazed adoration.

"Haha wow-uh, thanks, Pine Tree?" Bill appeared a mixture of horribly confused and unduly pleased by the sincere (if slightly delirious) compliment; one of a precious few that he'd ever received. "You just hang in there, Pine Tree. Once doctor Cipher is done collecting groceries, then we can begin your life saving surgery!"

"Can' do surg'ry w'thout nurse Pine Tree," Dipper replied with unwavering surety, fumbling to reach for his glass of water. A few drops dribbled down his chin when he sipped it, and the extreme temperature difference was maddening. He sloppily wiped his face against the couch, uncaring if he got it wet. Exhaustion played a staccato rhythm against his weary bones, but he struggled to stay awake. He wouldn't sleep without Bill in the room.

"Guess you're right about that; who else would enable me with sharp surgical tools?" Bill teased, his sawblade grin pulled wide. Pine Tree sure was adorable when he was feverish and delirious! "Alright, I'll go retrieve your gross human groceries. Don't die while I'm gone!" Bill hesitantly left for the front door, only just realizing that he'd left the car running. He killed the engine once he'd stepped outside, popping the trunk and loading his arms with grocery bags. Something was a little soggy, but he imagined it'd be fine once he put it in the fridge. He slammed the trunk closed with his forehead, laughing delightedly at the forming ache and practically skipping back into the house. He slammed the door behind him and tossed his armfuls of food onto the island in the middle of the kitchen, before he began stuffing everything cold into the fridge. He'd have to remember to remind Pine Tree of the stuff they still needed to throw out.

Dipper kept a dreary eye on Bill to ensure he wasn't tossing things in the garbage disposal for fun, only to find a smile settling on his face as the demon dutifully threw everything where it needed to go. He knew he could trust Bill with the groceries. Dipper scooted up along the length of the couch, tugging his sheets and blankets along with him until he could rest his head on one of the throw pillows. He nuzzled into the cool casing, already warming from his feverish body heat. His eyes drooped shut, the cocoon of warmth and the sounds of Bill bustling in the kitchen lulling him to sleep.

Bill mumbled under his breath as he collected the ingredients necessary for his planned breakfast, feeling only slightly miffed as he remembered that he wouldn't get to share it with anyone. Whatever, more for him anyway. Besides, he was pretty sure feeding hot peppers to sick humans would make them explode, or something along those lines. Once his frying pan full of egg was merrily bubbling away, he glanced back at the sleeping lump on the couch, his face pulling into something softer than his usual hellish grins. He recalled the tone of utter honesty Pine Tree used when the human had complimented him; a real, genuine compliment, with no ulterior motives. He dredged up the sensation of a feverish body pressing into him, seeking comforting warmth, completely unguarded. He envisioned a tiny, almost invisible smile, meant for only him to see. A pang resounded through his chest, his heart struck like a gong with a sudden thought.

Bill wasn't sure what he was more afraid of losing: himself, or Pine Tree.

 


	5. Bubble

  
It was... strange, Bill thought, the way in which his entire world could be narrowed down into a single room, could be contained within a single body. Rather than enraged by the limited scope, he was fascinated by how focused his gaze could truly be. Centuries of looking at the world as a whole, zeroing in only to nudge pieces into place for the bigger picture.. they had left him disconnected. Not that he ever could have truly connected in the first place, not the way he had done so in his meat suit. To destroy, to consume, to break and twist and fix and mend and create and cherish with his own flesh, his own fingers and his own bones, to see with his own eye and be tethered by his own soles..

Well, he had always wanted to experience new perspectives. Even months after his descent into human skin, he still found himself caught up on the tiniest nuances: the wooden handle of a knife biting into his palm, and the steady 'thunk thunk thunk' of a blade meeting a cutting board, the acrid mint of toothpaste, sticking to his gums and stimulating his taste buds, the striking blue glow of a computer screen, shifting through colors and images as he willed it... the heat of a scalp trapped beneath brown tresses, and the soft noises of contentment produced by his explorations.

There was one nuance that never left his mind, and the more he learned of it, the more fascinated he became. Pine Tree, consumed by a fever that made him feeble, clinging, needy... behavior that was completely dissonant to his normal stiff, reluctant, almost cold demeanor. But Bill had learned ways around that. He had found exactly where to poke and prod to turn his Pine Tree into something soft and pliable, to drag out huffs of laughter and draw forth gentle smiles. His last remaining treasures, locked away in a human too young and damaged to know any better. But Bill would put him back together. He would find new pieces to fit into the cracks, and those rare smiles would blossom with absolute radiance.

But until then, he had to watch over his Pine Tree, nurture his wilting leaves. He'd stuffed the boy (man, not a boy. it was so easy to slip back, to remember determination and a little blue pine tree) with as much water and soup as he could, and had acquiesced to every request, pleading that he not leave the room when Pine Tree drifted off. At least the carpet was comfortable, Bill mused.

He had little to occupy himself with, considering his main source of entertainment was out of commission. At least until he'd struck gold, snooping in Pine Tree's room and retrieving his rarely used laptop. Bill hadn't really crammed himself with much knowledge of computers, and it took him the better part of an afternoon to even figure out how to use it. But eventually he was merrily tapping away, reading Pine Tree's files (his writing was adorably naive and optimistic, until it turned delightfully bleak) and peering through his photos (how scandalous! Pine Tree should have known not to save pictures of THAT nature to his hard drive. unfortunately, even those were fairly vanilla) before he remembered the existence of the internet. Instantly consumed with the desire to view heinous things online, he spent a good chunk of time simply typing random strings of letters and symbols into the search engine, but unfortunately it didn't result in much, other than a single commercial from the seventies of an odd, man-rat creature caterwauling about 'Stinky's Pizza Establishment'.

But even the vast reaches of the internet proved no match for the All Seeing Eye, and soon Bill was stifling giddy laughter as he watched humans embarrass and injure themselves on video sharing websites. He even managed to find some raunchier things, but found little interest in them. What use did he have for poorly made pornography when he had his own, delicious little human? Although, some of the more... inventive artwork DID inspire him with a few ideas..

Days quietly flickered by in such a manner, Bill clumsily aiding his sick human and Dipper slowly emerging from his fever induced delirium, which left him more mumbly and cuddly than he would normally stand for. His confusing haze of miserable heat and aches faded away, and allowed his warm, cashmere soft affection to well to the surface. He attempted several times to protest that he was recuperated, to rise up from the couch on trembling legs, only to be gently forced down by sickly long fingers and a blinding grin. So he would doze as often as he could, desperate to leave his illness behind and do something other than play the part of the invalid. As touching as it was to have Bill take care of him, Dipper could sense how restless the demon had become. He knew Bill Cipher was not one to stay put for long.

It was with that knowledge stewing in the back of his cotton stuffed head that Dipper awoke on a rainy afternoon, tendrils of clarity cutting through the fuzz that had blanketed his consciousness. Vision returned to him in blotches as his leaden eyelids deigned to acquiesce to his will, and colorful fuzz faded into clarity as he focused on the visage of Bill Cipher. Bill was sat directly on top of the coffee table, his face lit up with soft blue light and his one functioning eye scanning rapidly across what Dipper assumed to be lines of text, blaring at him from the laptop resting on his legs.

Dipper didn't even manage to muster words before Bill had noticed his state of wakefulness, his previously neutral expression lighting up with the brilliance of a bottle rocket. "Pine Tree, you're awake! Here," Bill plucked up a glass of water from where it had been sitting at his side (Dipper would have to remind him what coasters were again) and offered it to his Pine Tree, beads of condensation collecting on his fingers. "You're probably thirsty again. Quite the shock really, considering you've probably ingested enough liquids in the last few days to drown a horse."

"Thanks," Dipper uttered softly, accepting the glass into his slightly steadier hands and shifting so that he could sit upright. He relished the cool slide of water down his aching throat, and watched Bill tap away at his laptop. "I hope you're not looking up snuff on there. That kind of thing gets you put on a government watch list."

Bill laughed raucously, teeth gleaming like freshly polished surgical tools. "It was certainly tempting, but I have managed to restrain myself. I'm actually looking up vacation destinations! We had so much fun in Caracas, I thought 'hey, why not go to other places around the world and do other illegal things'! Or investigate paranormal nonsense," he amended with a roll of his eye, already sensing the oncoming admonishment.

"I mean, paranormal investigators _do_  have to bend the rules sometimes." Dipper hid a smile behind his glass of water when Bill's expression brightened. "But we're gonna try to play it by the books, okay? Where have you been looking into, anyway?"

"I'm glad you asked, Pine Tree!" Bill began in his cheesiest game show announcer voice, grin turning up ten notches when he noticed Pine Tree's amused exasperation. "I've actually been considering a trip to Japan! They've got all kinds of spooky legends and that gross culture stuff you humans salivate over. Also they have live squid that you can eat! Live, like-alive, still living, put it in your mouth!" Bill practically vibrated from excitement, and had to use one hand to grab the laptop and prevent it from sliding onto the floor. "Pine Tree you have no idea how much I want to eat a living creature."

"I think I'm starting to get an inkling," Dipper mumbled, slightly disturbed by the mental image of Bill unhinging his jaw and depositing an entire squirming squid down his gullet.

"HA, inkling! I get it!" Bill congratulated, setting aside the laptop so he could ruffle Pine Tree's tangled hair. "You're getting way better at being funny! Apparently the secret to your comedy is that you have to not be TRYING to make people laugh!"

Dipper batted weakly at the hand mussing his already disheveled mop, and pulled his lips into an indignant scowl. "I know I'm not funny, you don't have to rub it in." He set his glass of water down in a bid to free up his hands, and sat up further to attempt to get a look at the laptop screen. He remembered his lack of contacts only when he was greeted by a blurry smear of light. "Is there anywhere in particular you'd want to stay, in Japan?"

"Weeeeeeeeeeeeeell," Bill stretched out the word unnecessarily, "I was thinking about Kyoto, actually. That place is old as dirt, and has a lot of spiritual shrines and whatnot that have been preserved for centuries. Sounds like the perfect place to investigate supernatural happenings!"

Dipper hummed in thought, and dredged up dusty memories of Japanese legend and folklore. He certainly couldn't profess to being an expert, but he knew at least a little bit about the sort of supernatural myths in Japan; myths that would be certainly abundant in a place like Kyoto. "That sounds like a good idea. I doubt we'd find anything paranormal in Tokyo, anyway."

"Of course it's a good idea! I came up with it, didn't I?" Bill swelled with pride, and very graciously ignored Pine Tree's amused snort. "So you're willing to go, then? I don't have to stuff you into a suitcase or anything?"

"Yes, we can go to Japan, and no you don't have to stuff me into a suitcase to get me to go." Dipper very gently eased aside the thought that Bill would certainly be capable of stuffing him into a suitcase if it were necessary, and instead busied himself by peeling off some of the layers of blankets still hanging on his shoulders. "Can you get me my phone? If we're going, then I'd like to be the one to book the flight, this time. You know, so we don't spend seven hours at the airport for no reason. Again."

"Yeesh, I make you wait around all day ONE TIME.." Bill leapt up from the coffee table, snapping off a multi fingered salute before he traipsed up the stairs to retrieve Pine Tree's phone.

Dipper huffed out a laugh as the demon departed, easing the last of the blankets off of himself and frowning down at a shirt he didn't remember putting on. Bill must have redressed him, while he was still mostly incoherent. A light flush rose to his face as he imagined Bill gently easing him out of his clothes, just so he wouldn't be sweaty and gross. Dipper chewed on his finger in lieu of a lollipop stick, flexing his toes as he thought about the warm little bubble that had begun to encompass both himself and Bill. Sure, he had been sick and miserable for several days, but he'd at least had someone with him. Someone who was caring and attentive, even if he said casual things about maiming and unsafe medical procedures and nuclear armageddons and sometimes tried to drink things from under the sink. Bill had been clumsy and uninformed about caring for someone, but he had _tried_. He had been focused and attentive and put forth effort into making sure Dipper would be alright. Just the thought of it had Dipper's insides squirming with heat, the kind that made him want to curl up next to a lean chest and talk about nothing for hours on end. The kind that made him want to step back out into the world of the paranormal, to seek knowledge and experience new and fascinating things. Maybe he _could_  be okay again. Maybe he could find those small moments of happiness, and have them multiply. Maybe he could truly laugh and smile and enjoy the moments he spent with another. Maybe...

"Got your electric rectangle, Pine Tree!" Bill skipped back into the living room, gently tossing the phone at Pine Tree's face. He was startled out his revery with a yelp, fumbling to catch the phone before it could slip to the floor.

"Please don't throw things at me, especially not expensive things," Dipper muttered, before a thought occurred to him. He directed a small smile up at Bill, and watched a single golden eye widen nigh imperceptibly. "But thank you for getting my phone. I appreciate it." He smirked at the demon's wide eyed stare, and turned his attention to his phone, thumbing the home button. The screen lit up and flashed the date and time at him, a brief distraction that-... Dipper stared down at his phone, which blared 'August 31' at him in damning text.

And then everything fell apart.

 

 


	6. 22/23

Heartache, Dipper realized with sudden clarity, was not an expression, though perhaps he had known that all along. It was not a word used to describe an abstract concept, to give a name to complex feelings of grief. It was a sensation. It was the vise that twisted and clamped until his chest was home to splintered bones and gushing blood, ruined beyond measure. It was the needle that flooded his veins with shards of glass, cutting and gouging and flaying him apart from the inside. Heartache was the piece of him that had been hacked apart, bludgeoned and skewered until it was unrecognizable beyond the agony it produced. Heartache, Dipper realized, was not something that went away, or something that ever hurt any less.

Time was a noxious poison, eroding his fresh wounds until they were blackened and oozing, until he barely realized they existed before pain superseded reality. He wanted to reach in, reach in and _squeeze_  until the hurt was gone, pull and twist and yank out his misery, but it had already infested everything he was; wriggling and burrowing into his soft tissue, flaring with the power of a supernova whenever he thought he could _forget_  or _move on_.

He wanted to _scream_ , scream until his throat was ragged, but his breath had been consumed by void. He shook silently, at the mercy of a howling typhoon, and drowned under the torrential downpour. He couldn't, he couldn't _think_  his head was wailing klaxons and the misery of reality, he couldn't think but he knew that nothing _mattered_ , he couldn't _fix_  anything he couldn't-he couldn't, he _couldn't_ -

Dipper Pines was not a pretty crier. He did not silently leak crystalline tears, droplets of gemstones sparkling on his alabaster cheeks. He _wailed_ , choked and broken, the sound clawing its way out of his diaphragm, tears spilling in fat droplets. He shook and shuddered and sobbed and sniveled, his chest heaving with the effort of expelling his grief. He dribbled saline and mucus, his eyes puffy and red and his face blotchy. He was wracked with a misery that transcended his human flesh, thrashing him bodily in its effort to be freed.

His phone slipped to the floor with a thump, but it had already said everything it needed to. Trembling hands clenched at his hair, pulling and twisting in the vain hopes of tearing his own _stupid_  head off. He was barely aware of Bill, the demon, the Master of the Mind and All Seeing Eye, his-his tormentor, his sister's murderer, his friend, his partner, his- _everything_. Bill held everything that was left of him, the few intact pieces that had weathered his breaking. But even those were crumbling without a foundation. Dipper Pines was _cracking_ , and he didn't know if there'd be anything left of him when it had finished.

Bill Cipher stared in silence as his Pine Tree simply burst apart, his chest welling with a cacophony of emotions, all shouting to be heard over one another. He took a moment to sift through them, and decided that the sight of Pine Tree falling apart at the seams was utterly TERRIFYING. It was terrifying because he KNEW how fragile Pine Tree really was, how easily he could crumple and how desperately he tried to pretend otherwise. And STILL Bill wasn't prepared, hadn't thought of what to do when it finally happened, when all of Pine Tree's twisted turmoil erupted out of him. But he couldn't do nothing. He had to TRY.

Bill did not speak; he didn't attempt to laugh the situation off, or berate Pine Tree for his weakness. He very quietly settled onto the couch, eased aside the pile of blankets, and pulled the man into his arms with all the gentleness that could be provided by a being of absolute destruction. He threaded his fingers through tangled locks, and quietly eased away the trembling hands that had been pulling at them. His actions managed to garner a fraction of attention, and Pine Tree blinked up at him through a haze of pouring tears and self destruction. "I'm here, Pine Tree," Bill murmured, still a little too loud, but otherwise dramatically softened in delivery. "I'm here. Do whatever you need to do."

And he was prepared for the face that crashed against his sternum, prepared for the mess of fluids that soaked into his sweatshirt, prepared for the hands that clutched at him with failing strength. He encircled the heaving body with his own arms, his own hands and his own bones, and held on with the hopes that he could lessen the impact. Nothing he could say or do would make things alright, but he could at least make them a little better. He held on as Pine Tree was nearly uprooted, torn apart by the howling winds, until he had almost split apart. Bill held him together so that the cracks and splinters might begin to mend.

And so the storm passed, as it always had; a downpour of misery that slowly, achingly lessened into a trickle. In its aftermath, Dipper remained. He remained battered and damaged, but he remained. As sobs died into whimpers and tears trailed into hiccups, he was not swept away. Dipper was left in one piece, propped upright by the last light in his life.

Reality came to him in blotches, and the tension lining his shoulders dropped away with a shaking exhale. He extracted himself from where he'd been half buried in Bill's sweatshirt, and released his white knuckle grip on the demon's back. He pulled back and felt the arms encircling him fall away. Dipper wiped at his aching eyes with one hand, and sniffled in an attempt to clear his nostrils. He didn't meet Bill's eye, though he could feel its gaze upon him. "..Thank you."

In another circumstance, where Bill had allowed himself to be consumed by power and a lust for destruction, he would have found that statement more hysterical than any other. The boy he had destroyed, thanking the demon that had murdered his twin sister for comforting him over her death. Maybe if it were anyone else, it might have been funny. But in the path of reality Bill had chosen, he could barely even force a smile beyond the crippling guilt in his ribcage. "Don't mention it. But uh, is there anything else you need? I don't really know much about handling human grief. Probably pretty obvious at this point!" Bill's voice was an uncertain warble, unable to choose between manic cheer, outright panic or something soft and sincere.

"...Take me somewhere else. Please." Dipper's tone was leagues beyond pleading, a desperate last request from a man minutes before unquestionable death. He tilted his head to properly meet Bill's gaze, and could feel his own despair reflected in the demon's pupil.

"Sure thing, Pine Tree." Bill didn't dare to look away from Dipper's face, haggard and gaunt and lined with a thousand years of suffering. He peeled off his sweatshirt and tossed it aside, opening his arms to welcome Pine Tree's embrace. He moved only when he felt a warm face press against his bare flesh, and slowly leaned back to rest upon a pile of blankets, still containing traces of body heat. He carded one hand through disheveled locks, slowly easing through knots and tangles. "Just close your eyes, Pine Tree. We can make our own reality, for as long as you want." Bill waited with all of the patience he could dredge up for Pine Tree's body to go slack, breaths evened out by the lull of sleep. His own eyes slid shut, and he weaved his own Mindscape even as consciousness left him.  
\--  
Dipper slid seamlessly through the preliminary stages of sleep, aided in part by Bill's influence. In what felt like only moments he was blinking himself awake to be greeted not by drab walls and a bare ceiling, but by a living, breathing mural of stars. Cosmic brush strokes painted the skies above him, swirling masses of twinkling stars intermingling with vibrant clouds of nebulae. In another life, it might have been something enrapturing; the majesty of the infinite captured in one mind, one he could explore to his heart's content. But there was only one star that he wanted in his life, and she had been snuffed forever.

Dipper shoved the thought away with what mental will he could yet muster, and reminded himself of why he was lost in the stars to begin with. He needed an escape. "..Bill? Are you here?" His voice barely carried, so weak was the force behind it. When no response came he rose in a shaking, clumsy motion to his feet, and scanned his surroundings. The vibrancy of color immediately confirmed that he was in Bill's Mindscape, instead of his own. Dipper preferred not to think of what his own looked like anymore. He brushed past the bizarre and non-euclidean architecture that littered the main foyer(?) and headed towards a familiar staircase. His steps were plodding and consisted more of dragging his feet than actually lifting them off of the floor.

Unfortunately his tried and true low effort method of locomotion proved unfavorable when he began climbing the stairs, and the extra effort he had to put forth left him slightly out of breath when he crested the final step. The same set of ornate double doors were there to greet him, triangular doorknobs practically gleaming. Dipper could have sworn one of them winked at him when he turned the knob, pushing the door in to reveal something quite unlike the surprisingly cozy (and not at all surprisingly grotesque) sitting room he had been expecting.

Instead, he was... outdoors? The buzz of nighttime insects weaved a familiar song through the air, warm and fragrant with the scent of summer blossoms. He stepped forward onto a patio of smooth clay tiles, covered by an awning supported by rectangular stone pillars. Dipper scanned the backyard scene in puzzlement, noting the neatly trimmed (and bizarrely colorful) flowerbeds that were strategically built into the patio. It stretched out for a ways beyond the awning, bordering carefully placed potted plants and swaying palm trees planted right into the earth. A sitting area marked the end of the patio directly across from him, consisting of an L-shaped couch bearing numerous pillows. A marble firepit sat a comfortable distance away, illuminating the area with brilliant cerulean flames. Beyond the stretch of patio were dark, manicured grasses, lit only by smears of stars and the gentle glow of an alien moon.

"What _is_  all of this?" Dipper murmured, slightly unsettled by the picturesque (and incredibly mild) scene he'd happened upon. He approached the firepit, and vaguely noted the torches bearing the same flames that marked the other end of the patio. The stone was firm and warm under his feet, smooth to the touch but providing ample traction. A gentle breeze wafted by, rustling his hair and paradoxically carrying both the salty tang of the ocean and the fragrant aroma of the forest on its breath. Despite the ache in his chest and the paranoia lingering in the back of his head, Dipper felt... relaxed. For as much as Bill found his enjoyment in destruction and oddities, he could certainly craft something traditionally beautiful.

Still seeing no sign of the demon, Dipper eased his way onto the couch, which was much sturdier and more comfortable than he'd come to expect of patio furniture. He sank into the cushions with a sigh, and stared deep into the crackling flames. They licked at his face with a gentle heat, much too soft for a traditional fire. Curious, he raised a hand towards them, and flinched in shock when a lash of fire playfully wrapped around his wrist. He yanked his hand away instinctively, but no pain or irritation resulted from the contact. "Wow," he breathed, and after making sure he truly had suffered no harm, he reached for the flame again. It curled around his spread fingers, infusing them with a lingering warmth that he found unbelievably pleasant.

Dipper was so distracted by the fire that the faint strings of music lilting through the air completely slipped his attention. It wasn't until the sound was steady and thrumming that he looked up, recognizing it almost immediately. "Bill?" His head snapped over to the source of the music, where he found Bill's skeletal piano sat at the other end of the patio, bathed in soft blue light and flickering shadows. The demon himself sat at the bench, fingers coaxing out a melancholy tune. Dipper sat in a reverent silence, allowing the music to wash over him in a gentle wave.

He was startled out of his quiet enjoyment by the sight of Bill's eye shining at him like a golden beacon, packed to the brim with mischief. In an abrupt tumble of notes Bill had switched songs entirely, and sucked in a breath to belt out a slew of lyrics. "OOOOOOOHHHH~ When the moon hits your eye, like a big pizza pie, THAT'S amore!" His horrifically off-tune caterwauling absolutely demolished the drowsy, delicate atmosphere, and Dipper was left gaping in disbelief. "When the world seems to shine like you've had too much wine, THAT'S AMORE!" Bill punctuated his lyrics with a massive wink, giggles slipping through his teeth as deformed fingers fumbled over the keys in a drunken serenade.

"Are you- you're really-seriously?!" Dipper sputtered. "Why would you sing _that_  song, of all the millions of love songs you could have chosen?!"

"Don't interrupt, Pine Tree!" Bill tutted, before launching into another wailing of ill-fitting lyrics. "WHHHHEN the stars make you drool just like past e fasul, THAT'S AMOREEEEE! When you dance down the street with a cloud at your feet, you're in looove!" Bill abruptly leapt up from his seat at the piano, where the keys continued to tinkle out the tune he'd been playing. He swayed and spun entirely off-kilter on his way over to a horrified Pine Tree, and the demon guffawed at the deer-in-headlights expression the man wore. He plucked Pine Tree up off the couch with ease, positioning their hands to his liking. "Dance with me, Pine Tree!"

"I cannot _believe_  how stupid you are-" Dipper cut off the rest of his rant with a yelp as he was dipped out of the blue, his hair brushing the patio tiles before he was yanked back upright. He begrudgingly fell into step with Bill, but only so that he could avoid being tossed around like a ragdoll.

"When you walk in a dream but you know you're not dreaming-signoreee! Scuzza me, but you see, back in old Napoli-" Bill sent them into a chaotic twirl, his laughter blending with Pine Tree's yelps and squeaks of fright. "That's amoreee!" He proclaimed in a bellow, pressing Pine Tree against his heart before dipping him once more. "Wheeeen theee moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie-that's amore! When you've had too much wine and the world seems to shine, that's amore!" Bill swayed them back and forth across the patio, the firelight playing mystically over his face, exaggerating his shadows and enhancing the vibrant golden light of his Eye of Providence.

"Bells will ring ting-a-ling-a-ling, ting-a-ling-a-ling! And you'll sing viiita bellaaa," Bill crooned, his voice lowering from its ghastly wail into something dramatically more melodious. He slowed their frantic steps, swaying Pine Tree back and forth as the piano's light hearted tune mellowed. "Hearts will play tippy-tippy-tay tippy-tippy-tay like a gay tarantella-lucky fella!" Bill winked, grinning as though he'd eaten the canary and its cage.

Dipper swallowed a knot in his throat as things slowed even further, until they were practically standing still, the piano holding notes into long, wistful tones. Bill's grin softened around the edges, his eye zeroed in so as to make Dipper feel as though he were being seen inside and out. "When you walk in a dream but you know you're not dreaming, signore... scuzza me, but you see, back in old Napoli..." The demon's voice had traded volume for impact, each word striking Dipper not like blows, but caresses. Gentle hands that traced his throat and cheeks, ones that pulled him close and held him upright. He tightened his hold on those hands, thumbs stroking the protruding knuckles.

"That's amore," Dipper whispered, and in that moment knew he meant it more than he ever had before.

 

 


	7. Bitter|Sweet

 Cerulean flames burned low in a marble firepit, their light refracting off the countless shards of glass that they leapt from. The gentle song of summer nights rolled in once Bill's piano finally fell into silence and left them to embrace under a blanket of stars. Dipper inhaled a cocktail of scents with every shaking breath, a heady mixture that left him feeling almost dizzy. They all invaded his senses, the sweet grasses and an oily fire, the tang of seawater and the peculiar nighttime aroma that he had never been able to put a name to. And beyond that, a more familiar scent; coagulation, blood thick as tar and old as the bones trapped beneath its bubbling surface, and the sharp tang of precious metals, gleaming and razor edged. It was the scent of a demon; the scent of _his_ demon.

It should have been sickening, he thought dimly. He should have been revolted by the foul stench of death and cold stars that swirled around Bill Cipher in a noxious miasma. But instead he had fallen prey to it, been intoxicated by it. It was still something spectacular and almost frightening, the way Bill's presence could stretch so far beyond his mortal bonds. His voice and theatrics could stand a thousand feet tall, and sweep Dipper away into cyclonic mania. But he wasn't frightened anymore. He welcomed the reprieve with open arms, a chaotic swelling of bombast that left him breathless and rosy cheeked. He felt alive, in those moments. And that... was a gift, wasn't it? Dipper was thankful for it, to be led out of the dark to grasp pure, pulsing sunlight between his fingers, if only for a few moments.

But Dipper couldn't ride his high forever. He would always, inevitably, crash. He would come down as if a meteorite made flesh, and crumble well before impact. He would be left scattered and smoking, until Bill could pull the pieces together and lift him up again. But it couldn't... he couldn't _last_  like that. One day Bill wouldn't be able to cobble him back together again. He needed to provide his own stability, enough to stop himself from falling apart every time he was reminded of his mistakes. But first.. he had to figure out how.

Bill Cipher studied the face he so desperately wished to grasp, were his hands not occupied with stroking the smooth, pallid flesh of shaking fingers. It was a face he had viewed through a vibrant spectrum of emotion, presented to him in countless shades depending on what burned in his chest. There was youth in that face, a fairness that lingered despite its haunted contours. Beyond glass cut cheeks and trembling frowns and the bruising shadows that lived beneath sunken eyes, Bill could still see how young his Pine Tree really was. He could see it in the prickle of facial hair that hadn't yet thickened, and the faint impression of acne scars across the bridge of a perpetually reddened nose. He could see it in the liquid softness of Pine Tree's eyes, even when they were hazy with exhaustion, or dulled by indifference. He could see it in soft pink lips, slightly chapped and consistently chewed by worrying teeth. He could see it in the way all of the lines around Pine Tree's mouth and eyes smoothed away in slumber, replaced with contented dozing.

Bill Cipher had always viewed himself as timeless; he may not have been around at the beginning, but boy, would he be around for the end. Watching the flickering of human lives, snuffed like ants under his magnifying glass, had caused him to view them as brief sparks, just a blink and they disappeared forever. But Bill Cipher would outlast them all, would push them along until they assured their own destruction at his hand. He'd designed his vessel with such thoughts in mind; eternal, powerful, a face unchanging and an age unplaceable, because he TRANSCENDED the limitations of lifespans.

Until things changed, at least. Until he was truly fitted into a skin made for him, rather than one he'd taken for a joyride. Until he had severed all ties and left himself stranded with only the resources he could fit into a physical mind. It was only then that he could truly see the finer details, could notice the slow ticking passage of time, and the effect it had on human bodies and psyches.

Or at least, one human body and psyche in particular. Rather than a molehill, Bill had been exposed to a mountain range of Pine Tree's mental and physical status, and had more than done his part in carving numerous valleys. Even still he was smoothing down the crumbling earth, building over fissures and trying to build up, and up, and up.

Bill had seen happiness as a result of himself, before. He had seen it in the eyes of Stanford Pines, who believed he had befriended something so far beyond himself, believed he had IMPRESSED it, and it would give him the knowledge he so desperately sought. He had seen it in the eyes of his followers over the ages, beyond their manic, fervent worship, there was the hope that he would be The Answer. There was the hope that he could help them, intrinsically broken people, and fill the holes that resided within them. At the time, he had found it hilarious, how easily he could flatter and soothe and build up fragile human minds into thinking he was their greatest ally, and then flatten it all with a single action.

But he was learning how difficult it was to MEAN those things. To make them sincere, to truly put himself forth and use his true desires to HELP someone, someone he had already fractured. Stanford Pines had scabbed over, crusted and prickly and still raw at the edges. But Pine Tree was MENDING. Bill could see it, could see the tentative knitting of ragged tears, smoothing and pulling back together. He would never be the same, of course. Bill Cipher was much too thorough for a result of that nature. But he would be better.  
\--  
"So!" Bill's voice, bright and obnoxiously loud, cut through the quiet like a chainsaw. "As nice as it is to stand here and not do anything, let's not! We're in the Mindscape, after all; there's limitless possibilities at our fingertips!" He waved one such handful of crooked fingertips, a burning streak of color blazing across the night sky in mimicry of his trajectory. "We could be, I dunno, pirates or something: swashbuckling and bloodthirsty and treasure hungry!" Bill's hand was suddenly grasping an ornate cutlass, the handle bejeweled with snarling mouths and one eyed skulls. Bill swung it with the same carelessness as one might a paper plate, and Dipper ducked out of the way with a yelp.

"As much fun as I'm sure it would be to be seasick and smell like brine, I'll pass," Dipper mumbled dryly, carefully extracting himself from Bill's person. He swayed a little where he stood, unsteady without another body to support him. "Listen, we.. I can't keep doing this." Dipper paused to formulate his words properly, and found Bill's undivided attention upon him. "I can't... distract myself, forever. Pretending and lying and closing my eyes, wishing it would go away-" Dipper fisted his hands in the fabric of his pants, blinking rapidly. "..I just need to... talk, about something. About her..a-about Mabel. The worst thing I've ever done to her was pretend she didn't matter, but I can't _do_  that anymore." Dipper forced himself to speak, to work past the pain compressing his ribcage. He couldn't clam up, he couldn't fall apart. He had to move past everything if he ever wanted to feel okay again.

Bill slowly blinked one eye, and then the other. A triangular pupil twitched over every inch of Pine Tree's rigid posture, noting the faintest trembling of his hands, even with how much pressure they applied to the fabric in their grasp. The Eye of Providence locked on a muddy gaze, given clarity through determination. "Sure thing, Pine Tree. While I may love the sound of my own voice, I'm also an EXCELLENT listener. Especially with ears!" Bill flung an arm around Pine Tree's shoulders and steered him over to the couch, settling them both down with a flop into the neatly arranged pillows.

The firepit blazed brighter as Bill came into close proximity, and Dipper managed a twitch of the lips when he heard the demon mutter something about 'scandalous behavior'. He stared down at his hands, their grip on his pants released but the tension still obvious in the trembling of his fingers. "I... Mabel, she-.." Dipper waited for words to formulate, but the cacophony of thoughts whirling through his head kept well out of his reach. "I-..I don't know-"

Bill clapped a sickly hand on Pine Tree's shoulder to interrupt, his smile garishly wide but tinged with concern. "Hey, don't sweat it, Pine Tree! How about instead of overthinking things like you love to do, you start small! Tell me something about Shooting Star that I don't know. Anything that pops into your head."

Dipper chewed on his lip for a moment, and decided to take Bill's advice. Instead of funneling all his thoughts, he plucked one at random, and allowed it to tumble from his mouth. "W-when we were young, Mabel, she... somehow managed to break two fingers, by getting them caught in the car door. We were so young that she had to get physical therapy for a while, so that she could properly re-develop full motor functions in those fingers."

Bill nodded slowly, looking both pleased and intrigued. "Huh. Neat! Now, without thinking about it, tell me something about her that nobody else knows. It doesn't have to be embarrassing or incriminating, but I certainly wouldn't mind if it was!"

Dipper fidgeted with his fingers, slightly wary of divulging more personal information, but... "She-we kept a bird in our room for six months when we were eight. She found it on the street with a broken wing, and wanted to nurse it back to health. Of course, our parents wouldn't let us keep a wild bird in the house, so we kept it a secret. We fed it worms we dug out of the garden, and birdseed that we snuck in from the garage. When we were sure it had recovered, we let it go, and it kinda.." Dipper made a vague swaying motion with his hand, something fond resting on his lips, "wobbled off into the sunset. She named it Birdtholomew. And, next spring, there was a new bird's nest in one of the trees in our front yard."

Bill nodded again, a snicker slipping through his teeth from Pine Tree's recounting. He bit down on the urge to launch into spiels of nonsense that were only vaguely related to the topic at hand. "Okay. Tell me about your favorite memory with Star. Whatever moment with her was your happiest."

For a brief moment, Dipper froze up. Bittersweetness rested heavy on the back of his tongue, and he could barely breathe around the grief constricting his chest. But-he had to let go. Mabel.. would have wanted him to be able to talk about her. To remember her without falling apart. To say her name without choking up. To be _happy_ , even without her. Dipper shuddered out a breath, and allowed words to flow through him. "It.. it's so hard to just pick one; whenever I was with her, I felt... lighter. Like all the worries of the world could be pushed aside for at least a moment. She-..M-Mabel, she was-"

Bill eased his arm around Pine Tree's shoulders when he noticed the boy tensing up, words crashing together as he struggled to shape them. "Hey, don't force it, Pine Tree. Just say whatever you need to. Contrary to popular belief, I can wait."

Dipper leaned into the one-sided embrace, and soaked in the warmth of Bill's body. It was more grounding than the flickering heat of the fire, more comforting. "Sorry, I... When Mabel and I were fifteen, we had just come back to Gravity Falls for the third summer there. Things were... more relaxed, than the summer before; when we were waiting for you to show up again. I had started writing, by that third summer. I was really secretive with it, too; just.. shuffling papers back and forth in the dark, constantly writing and rewriting.. I think I wasted more ink by biting through pens than I actually put down on the paper." Dipper could still remember the bitter tang of cheap ink in his mouth, could practically feel the fresh sheets of paper between his fingers. "And eventually I actually.. finished, something. A short story, something dumb that I don't even remember very well..."

Dipper choked down something self-deprecating, and did everything in his power to recall the night as vividly as he could. "Mabel badgered me for _days_ , pleading for me to let her read it. And I was just so-self conscious, you know? I had never really had much faith in myself... but eventually I gave up and let her read it. I was shaking with nerves the entire time. I mean I-I knew logically that she wouldn't tell me I was terrible, but-the fear was still there, irrational. I just never expected..." Dipper bit his lip, something so long removed that it was almost foreign rising in his chest: love, love for his sister, the absolute, unbreakable fondness and adoration of his better half. "The way she smiled at me when she finished was.. a-and she-she said she was _proud_  of me, I.." Tears burned in his eyes, memories soaking him through with syrupy nostalgia and unbearably sweet fondness. "I cried, because it just-meant so much, I guess. Writing wasn't-it wasn't like mystery hunting, or taking tests, where you either got results or you didn't. It was _me_ , it was my thoughts and feelings put on paper, and-they mattered, they were _okay_ , and sh-she was _proud_ -"

Bill's eyes widened in alarm as Pine Tree trailed off into tears, hands pressed against his face. "Hey, whoa, waterworks alert!" The demon pulled Pine Tree onto his lap, and entrapped him in a crooked embrace. He worked his hands against the tense knots in Pine Tree's back, easing them out with soft, repetitive motions. "Jeez, the whole point of this was to help you STOP crying!" Bill's words were teasingly mocking, but a note of something sincere wormed its way into his voice.

"I-It's alright," Dipper sniffed, tears tracking freely down his face. "It isn't your fault, I just... I can't believe I almost forgot how much she meant to me. How much she _means_  to me." Dipper forced himself to sit up straighter, to meet Bill's mismatched gaze fully, despite his watery vision. "Thank you, for... listening. I.. I really needed this." He leaned up in a moment of daring and brushed his lips against the side of Bill's mouth, slightly cool under his touch. "But... I think we should wake up, now. We.. we have places to go, right? Mysteries to uncover. A whole world to explore."

Bill's hand twitched, unsure if it wanted to cup the tentative smile that was angled so hopefully up at him, or brush against the lingering heat of Pine Tree's kiss. "I... yeah, kid. We've got places to be, and money to burn." He pulled a head of tangled curls against his chest, and felt the Mindscape begin to unravel around him.

"Let's conquer the world, you and I, alright?" 


	8. Notches

  
"-was thinking of calling it 'Dadlantis'. It would've been a utopian society populated exclusively by hard working middle aged men attempting to provide for their families. But the twist is that none of them actually have any families, and once they realize that they become trapped in an existential nightmare for all of eternity!" Bill's cackles, as subdued as they were, still managed to attract a worried look from a mother attempting to reign in her child and prevent them from knocking over an eyewear display.

"I'm not even going to ask what made you think this is an appropriate topic to discuss in public," Dipper began in his 'I'm ranting but I'm in public so I can't raise my voice' tone, "but I _will_  point out that psychological torture _isn't_  something you should be talking about when other people are around."

Bill adopted an affronted air, lips parted in shock and a hand delicately laid over his chest. "Psychological torture? Pine Tree, you're mistaken! I'm merely outlining my previous plans for a.. what's the thing humans say when they pretend something isn't psychological torture-oh, yeah! A 'social experiment', that's all! See, completely innocent, and perfectly acceptable to talk about within earshot of small children!" Bill flashed a grin that exposed sickly gums, deformed by the sheer quantity of teeth rooted into the delicate tissue.

"You know, this really isn't helping to further my trust in you being left alone with other people," Dipper stated dryly, exasperation weaving into his tone. He hadn't _really_  expected Bill to behave himself, but.. it would have been nice.

"Aw, don't be like that! You should know by now that I am one hundred percent trustworthy!" Bill tilted his head as if winking in an over exaggerated manner, but his one functioning eye remained wide open.

Dipper snorted, shifting his legs to try and get more comfortable on the hard wooden chair he was forced to wait in. "And that description applies maybe _one_  percent of the time, right?"

"I never liked working in absolutes," Bill replied flippantly, the effect ruined by his frequent giggling. "What's the fun in anybody having any idea of how you'll act, Pine Tree?"

"Because it proves that you're trustworthy," Dipper droned flatly, and idly hoped a stray meteorite would impact his exact location. "Which you've clearly proven yourself to be the opposite of. Which makes you pretty predictable, really." He felt a smirk twitch at his lips when Bill stared at him, expression clearly startled.

"Wha-you can't do that! You can't PREDICT unpredictability! That's now how that works!" Bill crowed, somehow managing to avoid breaching the line of 'indoor voice' while still being piercingly loud.

Dipper inspected his nails, giving off an air of nonchalance. "I'm just saying that when you adhere to a behavioral pattern with regularity, it becomes... reasonably predictable."

"NO! I refuse! You can't-you can't throw around these harmful buzzwords and think that they'll make your point FOR you!" Bill raised an accusing finger into the air as if he were preparing to behead someone with it. "Your logical fallacies aren't gonna fly around here, buster!"

Dipper raised an eyebrow at the airborne finger, before shooting Bill a skeptical, slightly puzzled look. "Since when have you ever been opposed to logical fallacies? I thought those were kinda your modus operandi."

Bill's endless well of vim and vigor was snuffed with the surety of a candle flame in a flash flood. He mechanically lowered his dramatically raised arm, and his smoldering gaze found intense interest in the blandly tiled floor. "Ever since I became stuck thinking in three dimensions."

An awkward silence fell over Dipper, who had been prepared to continue gently snarking the boisterous demon. He sat in indecision for a moment, unsure of what to even begin saying to rectify the situation. But before he could even formulate a response, his name was being called for his appointment. He hesitantly rose from his seat, rubbing at an exposed elbow. "Uh... I'll be. Back. Soonish. Try not to eat anyone. Please?" He received a disinterested grunt in response, and reluctantly left the demon to stew alone in the waiting room.

When he returned from his eye exam, Bill made absolutely no mention of the moment, and showed no sign of it having taken place whatsoever. He seamlessly deflected every attempted mention of his melancholic episode by loudly making fun of Dipper's protective eyewear, steadily twisting his train of thought off track with outlandish suggestions and comments. The niggling reminder clung in the back of his mind, but eventually he thought better of bringing it up.  
\--  
Dipper fielded a dry cough into his elbow, immediately assaulted by the heavy scent of cigarette smoke that hung around the entrance to 'Cranky Jack's Barnyard Brisket Bonanza'. He had to squint even with his new glasses just to see through the grimy glass of the double doors. "And _why_  exactly did you want to eat here, again?" His accusatory tone echoed off the cheap wooden panelling of the transitional room between outside air and the surely putrid interior of the 'restaurant'.

"Because it has a stupid name, obviously! Those are always the best places to go!" Bill's voice was less an echo and more a redoubling of weaponized sound, and he consciously dialed back the volume when he noticed Pine Tree's wince. At least, he did so once he had ceased laughing. "Besides, it had a good rating on the internet! I think. Restaurant ratings go by golf rules, right?"

Dipper was more surprised by his own bewilderment than the nonsense spilling out of Bill's mouth. He thought he'd already made it past the point of being surprised by anything the demon said. "Wha-why would-Bill, they're called _golf rules_  because they only apply to _golf_!"

"Well how was I supposed to know that? I don't have access to cosmic knowledge anymore, in case you've forgotten!" Bill pushed through the double doors with grandiose flair, and grinned smugly when Pine Tree scrambled through the entrance after him.

"You don't _need_  cosmic knowledge to figure that out, you only need regular knowledge!" Dipper followed on Bill's heel, burning holes into the back of the demon's head. "I know you have a.. unique perspective on the world, but that doesn't mean you're incapable of making obvious realizations."

"Maybe I am Pine Tree, and every single thing I've ever said has somehow managed to clear the margin between nonsensical and decipherable just from random happenstance! Maybe in two days from now I'll never say anything that makes sense ever again!" Bill momentarily peeled away from the argument to flash a disturbing grin at the greeter behind the front counter, who stared at him with dead eyes. "Table for two, please!"

"Just because you _say_ that something might happen doesn't mean it will! The odds of you being unable to formulate sensible combinations of words and merely producing them by sheer luck are so astronomical that you'd need the Hubble telescope to even get a glimpse at them!"Dipper paused in his rebuttal as Bill pulled out a chair for him, cheap wooden legs scraping against the even cheaper wooden floor. "Oh, thanks." He ignored the wink flashed his way, and sat down at the table. "And another thing-wait." Dipper blinked, staring down at the menu and silverware laid out in front of him. "Wh-why are we sitting down, I told you I don't want to eat here!"

Bill's grin stretched far enough that it nearly required a seat of its own. "Actually, I seem to remember you arguing about nothing important while I got us a table, without any complaints! If you didn't want to eat here, you should have spoken up!"

An indignant flush crawled its way up Dipper's face, the tips of his ears burning under his hair. He attempted to formulate a rebuttal, but after a few moments of reviewing their conversation, he realized that he hadn't actually said the words 'I don't want to eat here'. Bill seemed to pick up on his exact moment of realization, for his grin stretched even further beyond its already broken boundaries. "Don't even start with the 'I told you so's."

"Oh, I wouldn't DREAM of it, Pine Tree!" Bill inspected the fork he was balancing on his fingertip, his gaze occasionally darting to the still annoyed Pine Tree. "Aw c'mon, lighten up! I'm sure this place can't be THAT bad, right? I mean, it's still in business."

Dipper glanced skeptically around the restaurant, which was entirely empty except for them. He almost expected a tumbleweed to roll across the floor. "Probably not for long." Dipper unwrapped his own silverware, frowning down at a fork that only possessed two tines. "Aw, what? Bill, seriously, this place is a dive, and probably a health hazard. We haven't ordered yet, we can just-"

The waiter that approached their table moved with all the grace of a gazelle with one leg. When he opened his mouth, Dipper could have sworn spiders crawled out. "Hello yes and welcome to... this restaurant. What can I start you off with." His eyes were shadowed by brows so thick that Dipper wasn't sure where they ended and his hair began.

"HAHA YEAH," Bill began at an ear shattering volume that the employee didn't even flinch at, "I'll have the 'Leaning Tower of Brisket'! And my good friend here will have-"

"Water, just water thanks," Dipper hastily cut in, to avoid being laden with food he probably wouldn't eat anyway.

There was a moment of silence where the waiter wrote on his palm with a pen, mouthing words to himself. "Leaning Tower of Brisket and water. Cooooooooooooooooooooooming right up," he drawled, nearly face-planting as he dragged himself away with leaden feet. Bill and Dipper watched him leave with mild amusement and paranoia tinged concern, respectively.

"Haha wow, I think that guy might've been dead and just doesn't realize it! Should I break the news, Pine Tree?" Bill leaned so far over the table that his feet no longer touched the floor, his face practically touching Dipper's own.

Dipper lightly shoved him away to afford himself some breathing room, though what breaths he did take were tainted by the scent of dust. "He's not dead, Bill. Just... dead inside, probably. Also why would you order the least edible looking item on the menu? Do you _want_  to get sick? I promise, you really won't enjoy it."

"Ha! You seem to be underestimating my meatsack designing skills, Pine Tree!" Bill tapped a fist against his stomach, a boastful grin eating up any free space on his face. "I built this thing to withstand practically anything you could throw at it!"

Dipper was suddenly hit with a recollection of Bill shovelling an entire sponge down his gullet, and shuddered in disgust. "That doesn't mean there isn't still a chance you'd get sick from eating bad food. But I guess you've already ordered it, so.. enjoy vomiting. Just don't do it in my car."

"Just you watch, Pine Tree," Bill proclaimed as his towering stack of meat was placed haphazardly in front of him, "I'll DESTROY this probably delicious meal, and then all you'll have to eat is your own words!" Bill dove in fork first, his toothy maw spreading wide-

Dipper winced at the sound of bile and food chunks slapping against grass, feeling his own stomach roil nauseously. He gently rubbed circles into Bill's back as the demon violently expulsed his stomach contents on the side of the road. Despite having been completely right like he usually was, he couldn't help feeling bad for how miserable Bill sounded. "Don't try to force it out," he cautioned, hearing a particularly violent hacking before the next wave of vomit splattered on the grass.

Bill was too busy searing his own mouth and throat with stomach acids to respond, his frustration and helplessness and frustration AT his helplessness quickly filling the void that his dinner had left. Reflexive tears trickled down his face, and he was utterly disgusted by them. He wasn't- Bill Cipher wasn't WEAK. But the constant, uncontrollable heaving of his stomach and esophagus did a fair job of obscuring that fact.

The moment the flow tapered off into hacking coughs he wrenched his head away from the mess of bodily fluids on the ground, disgust marring his face in an ugly scowl. He shrugged off Pine Tree's hand, blinking forcefully in the dim night. Pale slivers of moonlight barely managed to illuminate the ground beyond the peripherals of Pine Tree's headlights.

Bill snapped out a frustrated growl, forcing the vague swirls of magic that still danced within his grasp to flow into his Eye of Providence. It lit up searing gold for a split second, before flickering out like a half dead lightbulb. A sudden wave of dizziness overcame him, and when he regained his bearings he found asphalt beneath his cheek and a worried voice in his ear. He leapt up onto all four limbs like an agitated arachnid, forcing himself into a standing position. Pine Tree's words faded in a moment later, permeating a bubble of static that he hadn't even noticed encapsulated him.

"-alright? Is anything bleeding, do you need a drink or something?" Dipper forced his voice not to crack with worry, his hands trembling where they were locked around Bill's wrist. He could feel tendons flexing beneath his grip, and slowly eased off the pressure. "Are you okay?" he prompted again, when it seemed no answer was forthcoming.

"Yeah. Fine." Bill's words were awkwardly clipped, the normal avalanche of syllables that were prone to spilling from his lips having been messily hacked off. "Let's just go." He brushed off any other words of concern by blandly climbing back into the car, settling into the passenger seat with his hands loosely clasped between his calves. He vaguely registered Pine Tree climbing into the seat beside his to pull the car back onto the road proper.

Bill Cipher didn't utter a word between then and the blissful nothingness of slumber.


	9. The Only Me

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry about the long wait! I've been super out of it lately. Unfortunately, I can't promise that this story will start updating regularly again.

  
Bill Cipher was dreaming. Nodules and synapses sparked with unconscious impulses, tainted by the demon's inherent magic. Muddled sounds and blurry pictures sharpened into hyper-focus, until the peaceful null of sleep was torn away in bloody scrapes, the veil shredded to reveal-

-He was screaming. Screaming into the endless, his voice thrumming with a supernatural echo that could have powdered stone. Twisting limbs spiraled into the black, clawing in rage for purchase, for destruction. A thousand eyes twitched spastically, aching to see, to know, to encompass. But Bill Cipher was alone.

His screams turned garbled, gutted by radio static and metallic whines. Words filtered through the cacophony, a desperate plea soaked with oily fury. "-CAN'T, YOU CAN'T, I WON'T **LET**  YOU! I **AM**  THE STORM, I  **AM**  THE SEA! I AM THE END OF **EVERYTHING**  I WON'T LET YOU DO THIS YOU **CAN'T**!" Oceans of oily chitin spilled into the nothing, eating space that didn't exist, filling an endless void that could never be satiated-

But Bill Cipher was alone. The yawning infinite stretched beyond his reach, beyond his gaze, beyond his power. He howled and shrieked with roaring hatred, his voice failing and faltering as it was swallowed whole. As far as he strained to reach, there yet remained unfathomable distance. Fury bled into panic, a blaring alarm that rang through every molecule. He curled into a roiling mass that struggled and ached to be real, to remember that it even existed.

"CAN'T, YOU-you CAN'T! I won't let you, I-I AM the monument, I AM the salt and the sand! T-the wandering eye, the grasping hand-!" Bill Cipher wailed into the dark, blazing with a light that had nothing to reveal. One golden eye struggled for sight, consumed by blindness even as it blazed. "You can't, you CAN'T, please!"

"H̵a̢ha̴h̸a!̶̵̴ ͞͞L̨͘ờ͟o̧͜k̢s-̢͘͜ĺ̨o̶o̴k̡͠s-̸̀L̕O̧̧͜O̧̧K̢S ̢l͠͡͞i̡ḱ͠e̵͡ ̨yo͢͡u'̴̡͘r͘è̵ ̧y̧͘l̵̵͡l̸̛͞a͏͠er ͘g̷͢ńi͝͞pa͟r̷͟c̴s͏ ̧͏é̕ḩ̵̧t̀ ̧͜b͢o̶̷t͟t̵̀o̧m ̨͟o͜f͟ ͏tḩ͞͡e ͘b̨͟ar̵̨͡re͏l,́͝͝ ̡̢H̀UH̛̕͘?̛͞ Ḩ̶̢op͞͝e͏̵ ̶̡ý͠͠o̧u̵͡'r̸e͝͞ ͟r̡͜eąd̀͜-͘͞r̶̕͡ę͠a͝͞d̀͏-̨R̷È͞A̛͝D̛͡Y ̢͘͏T̴̡O͘ ͏b̢i͏t̨ę͢ ͏̢thè̡͟ ̴́BU͘͡L͢͜͞L̢E͢T́͢, ̶R̶͝E̷KC͜ÚS!̀͘" From every angle emerged the screech of mocking laughter, a repeating series of notes that fuzzed and stuttered and crashed together into infuriating nonsense. The void was populated by a damaged polygon, sputtering and sparking like a busted television. Even as its golden bricks melted and fused, it managed to raise a flickering appendage to point and laugh. "H̡̛a͟v͟e͏̶ f̵̸u̵͘n̨ ̀W̵I̷T̢H ̴̢͡Y̵͞O͜U-͡Y̴̶OU͜͞-̛Y͘ÓUŖ n͘̕͞í̴̧g͝htM͢͜A̡̛̕RE̛S̴̛͝ ̀ú͢oy̴ ͢c͢it̵́eh̨̛͞t̶a̴̧p ̨m͏͠e͠͏-MÈ̶̛A̶T ͠S̸͜A̵͜AAA̴͞A͜͝C̀͝K̕͏́.̴̡ ̀W͏̸̡e̸̵͠lp̴͜,̢̛ ͘l̶̕ook̷̡͜s͝ ̵̀͘l͡i̷̢kȩ ̸̶w͟e͡'̕ŕè̶͟ ̡́͘o̴u̧ţ͟ o͟f̷ ͞͝T̨̨͡-̧̀͟T͜Í͜͡-̕͢Ţ͡I̴̸̕M̴͏E-̛I̸̢M͡͝E̶̡ ̸f͞͞o͜͡r̡ ̴o̵u͟r͘ ͘P̸̶͞L͘A̸Y̸̨D̶͡ĄT̸̛E̡!̶͘ ̡A͝d̨̡i-̕adì-̷͏sǫ̴id̛͡a̷̶,̕ ͟a͠mi̛g͟͡o̡͟!͟ ̧̡͜" With a jaunty tip of a hat that leaked unidentifiable fluids from its brim, the mocking shape winked out of existence.

And Bill Cipher was a l o n e-

-Air rushed into his lungs as Bill jolted upright, adrenal glands fuming up his consciousness with a wild sort of panic. His eye flickered back and forth, pupil jerking to inspect every detail of his surroundings. Desk door bed-bedroom. Another dream. Were he just some useless flesh bag, that realization would have been comforting. And yet, he was more unsettled than he had been even while trapped within the throes of a nightmare. Further still, it was a nightmare that heralded yet more; a harbinger of his vulnerability.

Bill's rigid posture eventually laxed into a slump, and he turned a tired eye onto the warm body beside him. Pine Tree's soft, rhythmic breaths were barely enough to even disturb the covers pulled over him. Words like 'cute' and 'adorable', terms used by humans to express endearment, had always been a tool for belittlement and mockery for him. But now that he could FEEL that endearment... he did find Pine Tree pretty cute. Everything about him was just so tiny! Maybe he wasn't cute by normal human standards, but Bill had never valued those and never would. Obviously, his and Pine Tree's opinions were the only ones that mattered. Bill's took precedence, of course, but he DID value his little human's input! Sometimes.

Except for when it came to cuteness, naturally. Pine Tree's self loathing was a powerful thing, and it would take time and effort for Bill to undo it. And what better way to help the healing process than to shower his companion with unwanted adoration and cooing? In addition to being obnoxious, it helped with his self-esteem! Bill considered that a win all 'round.

An idle grin rested on the demon's face, fingers gravitating towards unruly curls. He caught flashes of an oft hidden birthmark when he toyed with the strands, and felt an odd affection well in his gut. Yes, Bill would do everything in his power to make Pine Tree see how much better he was than everyone else, to let him know how much value he truly had.

Bill curled around the warm body with all four limbs, and sank willingly back into the depths of slumber. Thoughts of his dream were far removed.   
\--  
Dipper Pines stood in the middle of a warzone contained within the four walls of his bedroom. Articles of clothing were strewn about like the abandoned corpses of fallen soldiers, left to rot in the dirt. Or alternatively, on his (semi) clean wooden floor. A pair of open suitcases were laid out amongst a small clearing in the clothing crust, one of them completely empty and the other layered with a modest supply of clothes. And several feet to the left was Bill Cipher, face down in a monument composed entirely of yellow fabric.

"Bill, you can't just sit in your clothes forever. We have to pack _now_ if we want to make our flight tomorrow. I won't let it be like last time, where I had to do everything by myself an hour before we left." Dipper stared with a critical eye at the prone demon for several moments, before heaving a sigh and leaning down to begin collecting clothes. "I'm not doing it for you."

"I know that! I just needed to reach my daily quota of being nagged at. It's really one of the key bullet points to hit if you wanna survive in this market, Pine Tree," Bill rambled as he slowly emerged from his clothes pile, a lemonade yellow sock stuck in his hair.

Dipper rewarded the chatty demon with an exasperated glance and a sweeping gesture towards a suitcase. "Well, I need to reach _my_ daily quota of completing necessary tasks, so please pack up your clothes. I don't care if you fold them, they just have to fit."

"It's just so BORING!" Bill cried melodramatically, peeling the sock out of his hair and tossing it into the suitcase. "How can you possibly stand having to fill so much of your time with menial nonsense? Being a triangle is so much more time efficient. You can really crunch your schedule down into something manageable without biological functions and societal expectations."

"Forgive me for not being privy to the wonderful world of polygons," Dipper replied dryly, gathering up another armful of clothing to halfheartedly sort. "I've kinda been biological my whole life, you know. This kind of stuff, even though it's pretty tedious, is just... normal."

Bill flinched as if struck with a heavy blow, an exaggeratedly stricken expression on his face. "Hey, don't go throwin' around such volatile language! This is a family show!" He brayed out a laugh at the sheer exasperation on Pine Tree's face, and finally made an effort to begin packing away his clothes. "But I understand, kinda. As a multidimensional energy polygon with virtually limitless power and knowledge, I still found most of my activities pretty tedious. ESPECIALLY once I was imprisoned in the Nightmare Realm. You have no idea how boring that was. Just waiting and waiting and waiting... at least humans have a little bit of variance in their pathetically dull lives."

"I guess it _would_ seem dull from your perspective. I mean, if I was suddenly trapped in the body of an ant and had to do... ant things, I'd probably find it pretty lackluster." Dipper's tone dropped into something thoughtful, something quieter. "But there are only so many directions your life can go, as an ant. It's all pretty... straightforward, I would think. But that could just be human bias. Is that what you thought too, Bill?"

The demon thumbed at his chin, an expression of intense thought encapsulating his features for a moment before they broke back into a wide grin. "Pretty much! If we're gonna go with your ant analogy, I'd say my viewpoint was pretty similar. Just little fleshy things scurrying around to complete menial tasks until the ends of their short lifespans. But stepping away from all that... humans are pretty diverse. Sure, the majority are lame and dumb, but there's a few gems in the muck. Dunno if I could say the same for ants. And unlike ants, all you humans are a bunch of unique little freaks, no matter how much you pretend to fit into society's boundaries. That probably counts for something."

Dipper managed a huff of laughter in response, his mechanical motions slowing as mental gears clicked against each other. "..About, uhm.. being unique. You probably already know this, because of the 'all seeing' thing, but during my first summer in Gravity Falls, I found a copier that could... make copies of living things. And obviously, being a dangerously curious twelve year old with no real forethought involving the consequences of my actions, I cloned myself. My reasoning was so stupid, too, but at the time it made so much sense.. but the point I'm trying to make is, once it was all said and done, I think... I still have clones out there."

Dipper was silent for a long moment, long enough to begin feeling Bill's gaze bleed into the back of his head. He stared down at his hands, lightly twisted in the fabric of a t-shirt. "Sometimes I wonder what happened to them. If they survived. If they... felt the same way as me. If their diverting circumstances led them to a brighter future. I wonder if... there's a Dipper Pines that doesn't hate himself, and-and why couldn't it be _me_?" His voice cracked with a surge of existential sorrow, and he attempted to clear his throat and push it back down, back where he could ignore it a little longer. "It's just.. for most people, they know for sure that they're the only them. But... I don't know if I'm the only me. I don't know if I deserve to be the _real_ me."

Bill clicked his tongue, sauntering over to drape an arm around Pine Tree's drooping shoulders. "Well, if there's one thing I can tell you... it's that I know how that copier works, and those other you's definitely smell terrible if they're still around." He allowed himself a proud grin when a wet laugh bubbled up from below him, and he felt an arm wrap around his torso in kind. "But seriously, it's not worth thinking about stuff like that. You're the only you that's lived your life, right? If your clones are still kickin' it, they're pretty much entirely different people by now. And even if they resemble you at a passing glance, or they sometimes think down the same paths... YOU are my only Pine Tree. Nobody else."

Dipper shuddered out a breath that helped him stem the threatening flow of tears, and lightly pressed his face into Bill's upper arm. "T..thanks. That really means a lot, coming from you. You still have to pack your clothes by yourself, though." Dipper laughed at the despairing wail the demon produced, and released his grip to continue preparing for the trip, his heart a little lighter.

And as they left their home to begin another venture across the world, Bill Cipher was consumed by the thought of other selves.

 

 


	10. Perspective

  
Dipper's first, visceral response to setting foot in the Kansai International Airport was a sickening mixture of panic and unabashed awe. The airport was unnaturally pristine, considering the flowing throngs of humanity that clogged it to the gills. But unlike some of the other larger airports he had been to, there was a sense of order to the chaos of flowing bodies. Everything had been designed with efficiency in mind, helping to direct the flow instead of congesting it. Everything was helpfully marked and directions were easily found, with every sign written in numerous commonly spoken languages.

It figured, he thought, that Bill would proceed to disregard every sense of orderly foot traffic by thrusting the both of them bodily into a throng, cutting lengthwise through every possible nodule of people. He seemed to take a deep, visceral pleasure in knocking into people with his angular elbows, and Dipper could have sworn he stomped on a couple of toes with undeniable purpose.

It was only once he had been dragged over to a slightly less populated corner of the airport (near concessions, the scent of cheap food informed him) that he could manage to spit words and have them heard above the droning din. "You do realize that we could have just followed the signs to get here, right? Of course you do, why am I asking, you obviously just had to satisfy your contrarian urges in a crowded airport with other people around instead of having the common courtesy to annoy me in private-"

"Hush, Pine Tree!" Bill mushed a hand against his ranting human's face, managing to sufficiently stifle his speech with a couple of fingers. The frustrated huff that blew against his slightly-wet-with-saliva fingers was an absolute delight to receive. "Alright, let's see... your concerns are noted and appreciated, but the board of reviews has deemed them invalid so stop complaining. Second, my way is more fun and also you should know by now that basically everything I do is an attempt to promote and glorify the deconstruction of societal conventions. Point number C, what kinda goober walks in a straight line just because other people are doing it? Are you some kinda SHEEP, Pine Tree?"

Dipper snorted when Bill leaned down to give him a 'critical' look, the demon's crescent grin taking all the winds out of his serious sails. He pointedly removed the fingers from his face, and wiped his mouth. "Stop putting your fingers in my mouth, please. I would also ask for you to stop trying to tear apart the established order with petty misdemeanors, but I know not to push my luck. Can we at least save the rule breaking for paranormal investigations? At least then it'd be constructi- I mean, worthwhile."

Bill squinted down at Pine Tree until he accidentally closed his eyes, and then blinked them back open to resume staring with a gleaming pupil. After a long moment of silence, he straightened back up and widened his grin. "I appreciate your careful word choice and realistic thinking, Pine Tree! I accept your proposal." After another moment of slightly terrifying geniality, Bill loomed up to his full height, grin curving up into a wicked blade. "BUT KNOW THIS," he intoned with monumental gravitas, "for every moment that my chaos waits to be unleashed, ten THOUSAND moments shall be bloated by the suffusion of raw, unfiltered torment! MY REIGN WILL DESCEND WITH BLOOD AND FIRE, REALITY WILL WITHER INTO A HUSK THAT MINE OWN HANDS SHALL TWIST INTO UNRECOGNIZABILITY! I-"

"Bill that's great but we're gonna miss the next train if we don't hurry," Dipper interrupted with actual urgency, grabbing for Bill's hand to pull him out of his performance and back into their holographic reality.

"Waiting for another train sounds like a pretty good substitute for raw, unfiltered torment-" Bill broke into sharp laughter when Pine Tree yanked him forward, the demon nearly losing his balance. "So much vigor! I thought you'd be worn out after all the flying."

"I'm basically running on irritation at this point," Dipper corrected snappily, beginning the trek back into the undulating sea of bodies with a mostly compliant demon in tow. "I just want to check into our hotel so I can adjust to the timezone. After that, you can rain down all the blood and fire you want. Within reason."

"Within REASON?!" Bill squawked in dismay, "Within reason, he says! Might as well just fling myself into a quasar and get it all over with! Stifling my creative freedoms, I swear Pine Tree you're such a-" his voice faded back into the din as they hurried through the crowds, an occasionally rising pitch among the uniform block of noise. The sea parted for a fraction of a moment to swallow them whole, disappeared among the many.  
\--  
Bill sat in a busy silence as a blur of Japanese landscape flickered past the open window. Contrary to his previous experience with on rails transportation, the sleek, shining bullet of a train he was nestled inside tore through the air with seamless vigor. He could barely feel the vibration of the metal beneath his shoes, could not hear the rattling of a metal box stuffed with cargo, breathing or otherwise. He could remember brief flashes of hulking iron cudgels that barreled recklessly across groaning slats, billowing plumes of black ash that barely masked the stink of decay.

But corpse trains were far and away, from a time when every moment was both a blink and an eternity, locked within his gaze. One of the perks of having cosmic knowledge was also a cosmic memory, allowing him to revisit each and every moment with perfect clarity. While he'd done everything possible to trick out the grey lump stinking up his skull cavity, that clarity was lost. Everything fuzzed at the edges, just a little. Sometimes words were lost, when they held no real weight. Images were muddled as if he'd dashed a hand through the paint while it was still wet. Had he not known beforehand that humans didn't have perfect memories, the scenario might have been one of his favorite nightmares.

He wasn't so ignorant as to wonder how humans could possibly cope with their incredible limitations; it was all perspective, after all. He'd locked himself away in a tiny meat vessel, shearing away every scrap that couldn't be compressed down into his mortal capacities. Part of him ached to know that all his vast power and magnificent achievements had been lost to the ether of the Nightmare Realm, a dimension that might have finally collapsed since his botched Weirdmageddon. At least he could take some small pleasure in imagining that the rest of the twisted denizens floating around in that decaying cesspool of stardust and crumbled dreams had also winked out of existence. Vindication, however, only afforded him so much comfort. He'd lost every memory that wasn't vital to his existence on Earth, every memory that wasn't paramount to keeping his personality cohesive. He was barely a skeleton of himself, kept together by nothing but sheer force of will. It was...

Bill's gaze turned outward after a moment of mental fuzz, his senses tingling as he re-acclimated to perceiving reality. A sudden pressure against his arm caught his attention, and he glanced down to find that Pine Tree had finally fallen to the tug of gravity, fast asleep and drooling on Bill's sleeve. The demon's face split into a grin, one that softened around the edges as he felt the warmth of a living body seep into him. He turned an eye back on the rolling scenery, the setting sun beginning to stain the land in shades of red and orange. He felt Pine Tree's lips move against his sleeve, feeling the mumbled nonsense more than he actually heard it. He draped a slithering arm around narrow shoulders, and tugged the unconscious body closer.

Well, maybe it wasn't the worst thing in the world. Not when he shifted perspectives, at least.  
\--  
Dipper hazily blinked himself awake, consciousness bleeding into his head as he regained his motor functions from the clutches of slumber. Something had woken him up-a subtle change in the environment. He directed a tired eye to swivel around, taking in the dark, vague outlines of his bedroom furniture. He must have woken up in the middle of the night. He shifted his legs, covers rustling around them, and sat up with a weary grunt. Bill wasn't in the room with him. He must have been downstairs.

Dipper rose from the mess of blankets and sheets he'd tangled himself in, feet smacking the floor as he blearily exited the bedroom. The hallway was equally dark, shadows full and concealing. He paid them little mind, turning the corner to begin descending down the staircase. The light of the television fuzzed along the floor, a stark white-blue cutting lengthwise across the stairs.

He squinted down at the bottom of the steps, vision fuzzy both from sleep and a lack of glasses, and made out the sharp contours of Bill's frame in front of the door. The demon was facing away, seemingly motionless. Dipper chalked it up to alien quirkiness, and thumped his way down the stairs. "Bill?"

T WIT CH the demon's form flickered as if plagued by poor reception, jittering back and forth as a familiar cackle rent the air into splinters. Dipper was given a single moment of confusion before Bill existed inches away, the demon's face split in two by an unending grin. Blood sprayed from the ragged lesions in his face, and a cyclopic eye bulged from the center of his forehead, screaming yellow light. "Ṗ̷̪̱̊ͣ͡͡Ĩ̴͈̲̦̎̃ͩͣ̄N̢̬̱͍̠͇͓͂ͧ̃̑̅͟ͅE̛̪̳̿͆̔̈́ ̷̧̨̯͙̉̆ͧͪ̒T̛̞͓̬̹̺ͥͫ̃̋͟ ̸̵̰̪͓̦͚̣͒ͪ̌͋ͯ̈́Ṟ̏ͮ͆ͭ̑̈͒͞ ̲̟̹̞̱ͧ̒ͭ̐̋̃Ḛͣ͛̓ ̶̥̝ͥ̑̆Ė̴̗̇ͭ̏ͬ̽ ͙̣̻̳ͨ͗͐͗̓͟" the demon vomited in a hellish outburst, technicolor static bleeding off his skin in rivulets.

An instant was pulverized into dust before Dipper could make use of it. The demon's remaining flaps of face erupted into an oozing red blossom, his triangular skull punching through to engulf Dipper in a crunch of time and space that consumed every star and the yellow eye burned in the center of the sky the cutting edge the END̷̴͍̪̹̦͇̤̠̖̮͊̍̀͌͐ͣ̽̚ ̓̃̉̈́̿̈͏̲Ĭ̛̝̭̦͉͔̇́͒̚Sͩͤ͏̶̭̥ ̣̎̓́͡N̶̟̬̘̲ͮ̑͑ͫ̚̕I̧̘ͨ̍̔ͫ͡G̯̹̺̠͙̜ͭͦ͛ͭ̇͂̓ͯH̶̗̦ͧ͛̾̔͛͒  
\--  
Dipper startled himself awake with a ragged gasp, reflexively shooting upwards in his seat to inadvertently crack his skull against Bill's. He uttered a noise of pain in the same moment that Bill yelped in surprise, and clutched at his throbbing head with both hands.

"Geez Pine Tree, your skull sure packs a whallop! Guess it's gotta be pretty sturdy to keep that big brain contained, huh?" Bill's laughter was piercing yet somehow subdued enough to not echo throughout the train car, as if the demon was physically manipulating his own tangible volume. "Your timing could use some work, though. Can't knock me to the moon through a train, can ya?"

"Sorry," Dipper muttered, rubbing a little more forcefully at his ache in an attempt to soothe it away. "Just had a weird dream. I think. That's the most likely explanation, at least."

"Weird dream, huh?" Bill leaned in until his one functioning eyeball was barely a centimeter removed from one of Pine Tree's own. "Those happen to be my specialty! Along with a list of things that would exhaust your lifespan before I could finish listing them all, but lucky for you most of them go without saying. The ones that generally DO require recital include my specialty at playing eight hundred and sixty two thousand consecutive holes of 'Cronenburglar Super Golf', my specialty at tying shoelaces on shoes for beings without physical feet and/or actual tangible matter, AND my incredible talent for making up non-sequiturs!" Bill grinned charmingly for a long moment, before blinking each eye asynchronously. "What were we talking about again?"

"Nothing important enough for me to expend the effort it would take to unravel your nonsense," Dipper droned, gently pushing the demon's leering face to a more acceptable distance. He glanced past Bill's head at the sound of a gentle tone filling the train car, and grabbed onto the armrest of his seat as the bullet train began slowing to a stop. "Looks like we'll be at the station soon. We have a driver waiting for us, but..." Dipper averted his gaze from Bill's suddenly curious pupil, "I... need you to do all the talking. I only know the absolute basics of Japanese, and even then I'm extremely rusty." The words left him at an agonizing crawl, each one driving a stake of regret into his tongue. Trusting Bill to interact with other human beings was quite the gamble, and Dipper had never had much faith in luck.

Bill flashed a blinding grin in Pine Tree's face, attempting to tune it to something closer to reassuring, instead of menacing. "No problemo, Pine Tree! I am a master of language, as I'm sure you already know. But the fact that you know any Japanese at all is news to me! Must'a overlooked that."

Dipper attempted to wipe the dread off his face so that he could properly sate Bill's curiosity. "Yeah, I learned a little when I was... sixteen, I think. M-Mabel had gotten obsessed with Japanese idols at that time, and she made me take a class with her. A little bit stuck, but.. I don't think knowing how to ask 'where's the bathroom?' or 'can you autograph my face?' would be very helpful."

"I imagine it'd be helpful in certain districts," Bill commented casually, his grin twisting when Pine Tree snorted. "But regardless, I'll do all the smooth talkin' we need. Just don't lecture me if I manage to con a rube or two out of a non-vital organ."

Dipper rolled his eyes, climbing out of his seat and hefting his suitcase along with him as the train ground to a halt. "What would you even do with someone's organs-don't answer that," he cut in sharply, catching sight of Bill's great white maw beginning to open so that it could weave another nauseating monologue.

"Geez, cutting me off before the starting gate, huh? You really do need a nap." Bill raked a hand through Pine Tree's somewhat brushed hair, and barked out a laugh when he received an offended swipe in return. "Lighten up a little! We're in a brand new place, full of weird things to explore and paranormal secrets to uncover."

"Lemme tell ya, this is not a trip you're gonna regret."


	11. Full Mind

The drive from Kyoto Station to the Kyoto Royal Park Hotel was mercifully short, though Dipper spent most of it drifting between dozing and trembling with anxiety because Bill was actually conversing with another human being and Dipper had no ability to understand what they were saying, or intervene on Bill's behalf. Although considering the driver showed no signs of horror, i.e. screaming in terror or flinging himself bodily from the vehicle through the windshield, Dipper had to concede to the fact that Bill must have been well behaved for once. He'd have to make his appreciation known after a full night of sleep.

Bill glanced over at the mostly asleep Pine Tree a few times during the drive, but generally spent the majority of it conversing casually with the driver. He kept a tight lid on the urge to inform the man of the fact that the company he worked for had a 97.2% chance of cutting his job along with several hundred more as a result of their failing stocks, and hey wouldn't it just be so much easier to join an Illuminati cult? Considering his few remaining worshipers weren't really of much use anymore anyway, it was a surprisingly easy sales pitch to avoid. Instead, he slipped in casual questions about the history of local temples and shrines, as well as the Imperial Palace just down the road. He figured that if anything supernatural was gonna happen, it'd be in a place as old as dirt.

Unfortunately, the driver seemed pretty out of the loop as far as obscure cultural mythos went, and Bill silently cursed the incredibly short attention spans of humanity as a whole. Honestly, how hard was it to simply write down anything and everything anyone had ever said or thought? Axolotol's cultists sure had no problem doing so, he thought with bitter resentment and begrudging acknowledgement of their impeccable record keeping. But Mexico was a whole other ballpark, to tackle when Pine Tree was more confident in himself and his ability to not screw up literally everything, which Bill found to be extremely rare in most humans. He'd just have to prove to Pine Tree that he was capable of such improbable feats.

For the moment, however, he had to get said Pine Tree out of the vehicle while also carrying their luggage, which even his abundance of both fingers and wingspan had trouble doing. "C'mon Pine Tree, you can't stay in this guy's taxi forever! Who knows what might live inside the seat cushions," he said in just enough of an exaggerated American accent that he'd be unintelligible to any non native speaker.

"I'm up, I'm up," Dipper protested weakly, stumbling onto his feet as he attempted to pick away the chain link disorientation that had fallen over him. Despite his rather fluid sleep schedule, jet lag was still beating him down with an exhaustive cudgel. He blinked a bit of comprehension back into his weary gaze, glancing briefly at the hotel and its surroundings. The hotel itself seemed quite nice, the architecture a little dated but the building itself having clearly been kept up to date over the years.

The hotel was crammed between a myriad of other buildings on the crowded block, each of them retaining familiar shapes beyond their foreign design. He only had a few moments to gaze blearily at the crowded street before Bill was tugging him forward by the hand, carrying both suitcases with the other arm. Dipper almost felt bad about making the demon cart around his luggage again, but considering Bill could easily lift him with one hand and probably toss him about like a rag doll with little trouble, he thought it an insignificant burden.

The heavy bags under his own eyes proved just as weighty as his own suitcase would surely have been, threatening to tug his stinging eyelids closed so that he could enter proper REM sleep, instead of being repeatedly jostled out of light dozes by turbulence and half formed nightmares. He listened with half an ear as Bill chatted up the front desk, the sound of foreign syllables that _weren't_ horrible nightmarish consonants almost pleasant to endure. It was no less pitchy and piercing, but when he didn't have to exert a large chunk of mental processes just to wade through whatever bizarre nonsense Bill was verbally hurling at him, the demon's exaggerated tones were nearly endearing. Again, if only he could ignore the horrid, shrieking volume that they were expelled at. He vaguely thought about informing Bill about the concept of 'inside voices', but surely the demon would either ignore him or circumvent his argument with bizarre logic about there not being any such thing as 'inside' when one took the fourth and seventh dimensions into consideration, or something of that nature.

"-ine Tree? Helloooooooo, Terra Firma to Pine Tree! You better not have crossed any wires in that big noggin of yours-" Dipper blinked out of his hazy stupor at the sound of Bill's shrieks being propelled into his face. "Finally!" The demon complained once his leering visage had focused in Dipper's vision, his ghoulish face unnecessarily close.

Dipper was finally jolted into action when Bill stuck his tongue out, stumbling backwards when the unsettlingly lengthy muscle just barely missed the tip of his nose. "I'd really appreciate if you didn't try to lick me in public," he muttered, glancing down at the key card in Bill's spidery grasp.

"And I'd appreciate if you didn't take your 'Pine Tree' moniker so seriously! There's not enough nutrients in this lobby to sustain you anyway. Now shake a leg or three, our room is ready." Bill attempted to adopt a stern expression, but was unsure if his eyebrows were supposed to go up or down.

Dipper stifled a smirk at the sight, reaching out to tug on the demon's free hand and begin walking them to the elevators. "Thanks. I think we could both use some sleep after flying for twenty hours."

"Hey, at least you don't have to sit in wooden boats for five months to travel around the world anymore, all thanks to a certain someone." Bill winked directly in Pine Tree's face, and continued doing so even once they'd reached the elevators and he'd missed the call button twice.

"Are you claiming that you're responsible for aviation, now?" Dipper gently eased aside the monstrous palm slapping insistently at the wall, and pressed the up arrow. "I thought your whole 'muse' thing was just a cover story."

Bill ceased slapping the wall in favor of slapping his chest in an offended manner. "Just because I'm a pathological liar doesn't mean I don't sprinkle in some nuggets of truth here and there. But no I didn't help invent aviation. Those Wright jerks were 'too good' for cosmic intervention. Buncha hacks, I tell ya. Wouldn't know a turbine from a turnstile if they hadn't stolen the blueprints from John Arthur Herberwintenstimple."

Dipper blinked slowly, glancing between the side of Bill's face and the elevator doors that slid open in front of them. "..Putting aside the possible gross mistruths of widely accepted history, what floor are we on?" He stepped inside after watching Bill duck his head with some mild amusement, glancing at the row of labelled buttons.

"The thirteenth, obviously. What better floor for an investigator of all things supernatural, am I right?" Bill jammed a crooked finger into the thirteenth button, and then hammered the 'close door' button to ensure nobody else would be capable of getting inside. "Your human number superstitions are so hilarious!"

Dipper rubbed the bridge of his nose, trying to rub away the headache behind his eyes. "Yeah, I guess it'd seem pretty ridiculous to you, having a fear of numbers."

"The thing that's ridiculous is that you're all afraid of the wrong ones!" Dipper stared at the side profile of Bill's genial grin, attempting to extrapolate any form of mockery or joking.

Dipper heaved out a sigh, his eyelids twitching with weariness. "...I'm too tired for any life changing revelations, but I get the feeling that not knowing will haunt me all night."

"Fine, fine. I'll bring it up later, after I tell you all about how the severed head of John Adams is being kept alive inside the United States National Archives." Bill barked out a laugh that was much too large for the cramped elevator at the sight of Pine Tree's long-suffering glower. "Just kidding! Why would the US government bother keeping John Adams alive anyway? Lincoln would make much more sense."

Dipper thunked his forehead against the elevator doors, releasing a groan of misery that soon became a yelp of shock when the smooth metal doors rattled and slid apart. He would have face planted onto the carpeted hall were it not for the hand that flew to the back of his collar and yanked him back onto his feet. Dipper rubbed at his throat where his shirt had dug into the skin, his stupefied gaze slowly drifting up towards the nonchalant demon.

"Jeez, not even in the room yet and you're already at risk for major cranial trauma! Remind me to keep you away from the balcony." Bill secured eight spindly fingers around the (entirely too scarce) meat of Pine Tree's upper arm, leading him out of the elevator and down the hall. "You're welcome, by the way."

Dipper blinked out of his stupor, jaw flapping uselessly for a moment before he managed to conjure words. "Y..yeah, uh.. thanks." He stared down at the beige carpets, and silently tallied another mark for recorded instances of Bill Cipher trying to keep him from direct harm. The light, fluttering sensation in his chest could have been chalked up to exhaustion, or indigestion, or any number of physical ailments.

But Dipper Pines did not think it so.   
\--  
Bill Cipher sat upright in a stark white bed, pressed sheets and a stiff comforter pooled around his waist. The room around him was devoid of all light, save the brief flickers that managed to peek through the heavy window curtains. His Eye of Providence halfheartedly tracked the slivers of light that dashed across the floor. A grinning maw of bristled needles was pulled into a tight lipped frown, one that he tugged uselessly at with a crooked finger. He could hear car engines on the street below, passing by and fading off to be consumed by the sound barrier of other buildings. He restlessly shifted a leg underneath the covers, tucked under the end of the bed. His legs were too long to stretch out over the mattress, but the extra joints helped with compacting, allowing him to fold them for long periods without much discomfort.

He heaved out a long breath, his fifth in thrice as many minutes, and gathered his mental faculties. In mere moments the room was awash in a heady yellow glow, his one functioning eye blaring like a spotlight. It was a short lived relief, however, for soon a stabbing pain erupted behind the socket and his light sputtered out. Bill choked back a scream of frustration, strangely mindful of the body resting beside him.

Bill turned his aching gaze on that body, the slight form of Pine Tree rising and falling with slow, steady breaths beneath the covers. He had taken to bed facing away from Bill, the covers pulled so high around him that Bill could only make out tufts of tangled curls. His enraged scowl softened back into his thoughtful frown, and Bill rested a sickly hand atop the nest of curls. The day had been... long, and not merely because of the transcontinental flight. He had never once had to play the part of the fool; nonsense was his lifeblood, after all. And yet, when his bombast and mania were quenched in the dark of night, he found himself.. wearied, if only a little.

His endless circling thoughts were the culprit, to be assured. When he was at the mercy of his mind, instead of minds at the mercy of himself, it became much more difficult to turn off thoughts he didn't want to entertain. Thoughts of other selves, thoughts of nightmares and inconsistencies, thoughts of loss and something not quite like regret, but which occupied the same frigid hole.

Without the ease of a mental off switch, his only hope of avoiding his fears was running; whether it be running his mouth or running across the globe. He would sweep himself and Pine Tree up in what few frivolities existed upon the Earth that could catch the interest of a trans-dimensional dream demon, most of which had to do with other beings beyond the natural, established order. He would build Pine Tree back up into someone strong and confident in his own abilities, someone who would tremble only in cold and someone who could speak of his loves and those encapsulated by it without falling to pieces. But until then..

Bill removed the digital clock from the nightstand and hid it away, strangely mindful.


	12. Distraction

 

The moment Bill's consciousness left the waking world, his faculties were viciously assaulted. Sharp, dark pulses punched against the fabric of his half weaved Mindscape, tugging and straining to unwind the threads and send him spiraling into the throes of a nightmare. There was a brute power behind the malicious probes, running with heavy currents of malice. It was an emotion that resonated strongly within Bill's own psyche, but left him clueless as to its familiarity. Anything that might have helped him recognize its origins had been twisted and warped, frayed to the point of catastrophic instability.

It was for that reason alone that he managed to outmaneuver the invading force, projecting his Mindscape in a swirling quasar of subconscious strings that tangled the pulses and choked them into fizzling nonexistence. In a time span contained within the breadth of a sparking synapse, Bill was left wholly within his Mindscape, THE Mindscape, with only a bitter heat on his tongue to mark the incident.

"Haha wow that sure was unexpected," Bill exclaimed in a bright shriek to his empty Mindscape, the familiar sound of his own much beloved voice helping to ease his twitching nerves. Not that he was unsettled, or anything; there was no force in the universe greater than Bill Cipher, nothing more horrible and disturbing than himself. He stared into the maw of eternity and it did not dare look back. Bill summoned up a frilled salamander with one hand, and severed its head with a mouthful of perforating teeth. The head vanished upon contact with his tongue, but the brief spray of fluids did its part to quench his trembling anger.

He dropped the limp corpse of the false amphibian to the floor, watching with a vague sense of delight as the tiled floor opened up to consume it. Bill spent another moment smoothing down his suit and raking a hand through his shimmering hair before he finally reached out to tether Pine Tree's unconscious mind to his own. He slapped on a dazzlingly shark-like grin, and banished any and all concerns he definitely didn't have.  
\--  
The voice the voice a radio c r o o n i n g infused with static via enamel syringe, the sun dripped apart into four red blinking red numbers page within page clever are the old man's lies, but who is the face that composes his disguise? The forest floor red and red and dread within his eyes and his bones how many how manyNo sister's hand no legs to stand consumed by the eye brick by brick consume the sky wake-wake-wake UP PINE TREE TI͟͜M̶̢E ͏̧T͏̡Ơ̷͠ ̸͠ D̶͂͐̅̎̈̏͌I̼̥̮̗̱͂̂Ě̸̺͎̮̦ͤ̽͐̌͑-

Dipper gasped in a lungful of air as his eyes snapped open, a thunderous pounding resonating in his chest. He turned over onto his side and choked on the air attempting to expulse itself from his lungs. His gurgles quickly broke into a hacking cough, which was eased in part by an eight fingered appendage rubbing firmly at his back. "B-ill," he wheezed out between coughs, failing in his efforts to multitask the calming of both his respiratory system and his flaring anxiety.

"You really gotta get over your love/hate relationship with oxygen, Pine Tree." Bill knelt further down to apply a redoubling of physical reassurance, his horrifically contorted joints doing their job of keeping strain off his knees. "Just take it in slow, alright?" Bill's elevated volume had been turned down just enough to convey a sense of reassurance, which was twofold in also dampening his fears of having botched something when he pulled Pine Tree's consciousness through the ether. But of course they were unfounded, because he was utterly infallible.

Dipper nodded weakly against the tile floor, focusing on straightening the erratic fluttering of his breathing patterns. He endured a moment of breathlessness to stifle the coughs, and slowly pulled in a lungful of air. Of course, being as he was in the mindscape there was no actual chance of him suffocating, but the false equivalence would do more than enough to send him spiraling into panic. But the warm, steady weight on his back and the breathing exercises that had been long ingrained in his head did their parts, until he was left with nothing but a slightly sore throat.

"That could have gone better," Dipper managed to croak out, after a moment of steady breathing. He heard Bill bark out a laugh above him, and twisted himself around to accept the demon's offered hand. He failed at biting back a squeak when he was unceremoniously yanked onto his feet, and decided to graciously ignore the snickering at his expense. "Thanks."

"Don't mention it," Bill exclaimed with his normal destructive volume, squeezing Pine Tree's clammy palm before he ceased his grip. "Although if you could get that to me in writing, it'd be pretty swell."

Dipper snorted and swiped lightly at Bill's arm, unable to ignore the traitorous warming of his chest at the sight of a ghoulish grin. "I'm gonna take a guess and say that you didn't drag me into the mindscape for the sole purpose of extorting a written record of my gratitude."

"You're right about that! I was hopin' we could take this opportunity to get a little 'us' time in without having gross, smelly meat people all over the place." Bill slung an arm around Pine Tree's shoulders, pulling him in for a one sided embrace. "So uh, any locale you might have in mind for our quality time? Inside a volcano, on a plane underwater where all the passengers are fish, trapped in the dimension of the brain people? The possibilities are endless!"

Dipper rolled his eyes and felt the corners of his lips twitch upward. "No brain people, thanks. Maybe a meadow instead? If you can endure normality for a little while, at least." Truth be told, Dipper really didn't mind his surroundings too much; maybe a dimension of brain people _would_ be a little disturbing, but as long as he wouldn't be mentally scarred, he'd put up with whatever nonsense Bill conjured up, as long as he was able to enjoy the demon's company.

Bill wrinkled his nose exaggeratedly, and pretended to gag in the back of his throat. "A meadow? Sheesh, you humans are so vanilla. Buuuuut, I'll do it, as long as I get to make a few personal adjustments."

"As long as there's no corpses, no screaming, and no horrible mutants," Dipper stated firmly. He hid another smile as the demon groaned in palpable agony, the hand around his shoulder shaking him lightly.

"You wound me, truly! But sure, why not. I'm sure I can survive taking a step away from my comfort zone." Bill released his grip on Pine Tree, winking his All Seeing Eye before he snapped his fingers, the galactic mural above and the tiled expanse below melting away into a soft, fuzzy darkness.  
  
The darkness lasted only within the span of a breath, before a new world unraveled around them. A gently rolling field of stiff, knee-high cobalt grasses stretched off into infinity, lit in swathes of red, pink, and purple by the chaotic sky above. A pair of setting suns hung distant on the horizon, swirls of red plasma twisting through the sky like blood vessels. A distant cityscape was silhouetted by the suns, mere specks of darkness challenging the erupting sunsets. On the opposite horizon the sky had turned an alien purple, twinkling with shards of distant emerald stars. A smear of pink connected the two chunks of sky, wisped with fairy floss clouds. The field was dotted with patches of luminous aquamarine flowers, their petals carrying as motes of light in a gentle breeze.

Dipper gaped in wordless wonder at the world that had opened up before him, barely daring to blink in case he missed even a square millimeter of Bill's creation. The breeze carried with it scents he could barely even place, a fragrant perfume of starchy grasses and bio-luminescent blossoms. It was so impossibly real that he could scarcely even believe it was only a mental construct. He carefully knelt down amongst a patch of flowers, the petals plush and waxy against his bare skin. "Bill, this is... incredible," he breathed, barely managing to turn his gaze away from the picturesque view to look at the towering demon.

"If you say so, kid. My first choice would have been a psychiatric hospital where all the equipment and furniture are made of human parts, and all the staff and patients are inanimate objects anthropomorphized into sentient meat constructs, but I guess this is alright too." Bill's tone was perfectly flippant and nonchalant, but the proud, toothy grin that engulfed his maw spoke otherwise. He settled carelessly into the flowers beside Pine Tree, snatching a handful of blooms from their stalks and tossing them into the wind. "This place may look big and snazzy, but it's really just a snapshot compared to what I used to be able to do. Give me a century or so, and I could'a conjured up a fully functioning global society for this sucker."

Dipper's wonderment faded at little at the melancholy lurking beneath Bill's boastful tone, and he scooted over to press his leg against the demon's. He managed to pull up a slightly wobbly smile when the demon's burning gaze turned his way. "I still think it's amazing. I think.. I think _you're_ amazing. The way you can just-create, all of this, just by thinking of it-" Dipper cut himself off when he refocused on the brilliant shine of Bill's golden eye, his cheeks crawling with heat. "I.. mean, uh..."

"You're quite the flatterer, Pine Tree." Where Bill's tone should merely have been loud and amiable, there was an undercurrent of something much more meaningful to his words. He grinned down at the red faced human (HIS human, nobody else's) with a mouthful of bristled teeth, and simply admired him. His eyes tracked the splashes of color that brought life to pallid cheeks, streaks of aquamarine and fiery red, as well as the subtle heat beneath the flesh. One eye caught on a glowing petal that had gotten caught in an un-brushed curl, and another trailed down to a pair of trembling lips, caught between blunt, worrying teeth. Bill leaned in wordlessly, tracking the pupils that darted wildly across his own face; youthful eyes, wide and expressive, set deep into their sockets and marked with splashes of purple black exhaustion. He was a vision well beyond that of the false world around them, and Bill couldn't fathom why he had never understood it before becoming physical.

Dipper sucked in short, shallow breaths as the visage of Bill Cipher loomed above him. It was a face crafted by the hands of a madman, bizarre and terrifying and altogether wrong in everything it attempted to be: a gluttonous maw stuffed to bursting with enamel spires, skin sickeningly unwell, in likeness to the pallor of a drowned corpse, a pair of bulging eyes marked with an otherworldly cosmic mania. But that was what allured him so deeply and utterly, wasn't it? It was something new, something unknown, something beyond human. It was _enrapturing_ , drawing him in like a moth to a forest fire. To see within the depths of a blazing golden eye, infinite in volume and reflective of cosmic secrets that he couldn't even comprehend.. To have that same eye drink him in, voraciously consume him whenever he was caught in its hypnotic grasp, to see the flash of a predator's grin, flesh rending and world ending, to have it speak his name and taste his skin-

Dipper surged desperately forward, and melded his feeble human mouth against an orifice that could swallow him whole. The taste of Bill Cipher was intoxicatingly nauseating; he exuded the bitter powder of charcoal and the dull tang of metal, along with something infinitely more cold and sharp. But beyond that was a lingering warmth, a softness that suggested life beyond an exterior of galactic inhumanity. Dipper chased after that life with a feverish hunger, his head pulsing with heat and stuffed with cashmere.

When Bill's mouth began moving in kind, awkward and jagged, Dipper expelled a feeble moan and darted his tongue out to erode the seam of dead lips. He knew that just beyond them lay a forest of needles, capable of both slicing his tongue to ribbons and cracking his head like an egg, but it was that fear that frazzled his senses, leaving him dizzy and filled with fluttering nerves. Bill Cipher was a monster, an unspeakable abomination, a blight upon the known universe and an aberration without equal, and he was _Dipper's_.

Dipper warbled out a gasp upon first contact with Bill's teeth, his lips having parted to reveal an angler's arsenal. He licked across their glossy exteriors, mindful even in his fervor to avoid their deadly points. A shiver wracked his frame when Bill's own tongue, long and slender and unbearably warm, came into contact with his own. A part of him realized with hysterical amusement that he'd never actually gotten to this point before; his few prior relationships with actual human beings had been short and sour, rarely leading to more than brief pecks. It was fitting then, that he'd first taste the interior of a voracious aperture that could devour the stars themselves.

It was with incredible reluctance that he pulled away, chest heaving to gasp for air despite his not needing it. His lips tingled with aftershocks of stimulation, and he glanced up to meet the cosmic inferno in Bill's Eye of Providence. His own eyes certainly mirrored that mania, pupils eradicating the murky brown that contained them, his face flushed up to his ears and down his throat, hot breaths spilling from his mouth like fog. He panted for a moment, lost in the eternal gaze, before he managed a breathless utterance.

"I wanna get weird."


	13. Primal Ascension

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (Weird) Sexual content in this chapter

Dipper's words hung in the air with unquantifiable weight, coloring the air between his parted lips and Bill's sun swallowing smile with blotches of indigo impact bruises. Engorged pupils carefully tracked the machinations of The All Seeing Eye, its triangular orifice sucking in the light around it. Dipper shivered as it tracked across his face, beneath the flesh, within his bones. He felt less like a whole being, complete and singular, and more like a quintillion moving parts all barely held together, left to subsist in fragile harmony only by the mercy of the All Seeing. Dipper shivered from a galactic chill, and watched with hitching breaths as dead lips parted.

"Welllllll well well wellwellwellwell WELL. What an unexpected turn of events." Bill's breath did not leak so much as it was expulsed, more akin to a popped balloon than a punctured tire. He breathed in the flinch it produced in his beloved Pine Tree, the corners of his lips curved into razor edges. "I'd be pretty jazzed to humor your request, but first I'm gonna present you with an arbitrary number scale of weirdness, just to keep things on track. One to ten, for your primitive mathematics.

"Between one and three, I keep this physical form." Bill's words did not strike, or bludgeon; they constricted around Dipper's throat, leaving him short of breath even for the abundant volume of his unmolested airways. "Now, and here's where it gets really crazy... from eight to ten, I'll push the limits of your human senses just to the very brink of the breaking point. You won't know up from down, in from out, life from death. I don't exactly recommend it for beginners, but you've always erred on the adventurous side, haven't you?" Bill paused in the moment where he should have winked, both eyes locked on Dipper's own, and the trembling human found himself flush with heat and unbearably dizzy. "So I'll let you make your choice. And if it's ever TOO weird for you," Bill paused to snicker, "just say 'sombrero', alright?"

Dipper almost wanted to laugh, a hysterical part of him unduly amused at the demon's colorful choice of safe word, but Bill's smooth, even tone, thrumming with suggestion and booming with volume, kept him flushed and wanting. "Yeah-yeah, I understand. I-uhm.. S-se... six. Let's do six." He nearly screamed over his own words for chickening out, but the thought of how terrifying and otherworldly a seven might be kept him cowed and meek. But he needed.. needed-

"Six's our big winner tonight, huh? Glad to hear it! Hold onto your socks and hair follicles, you don't wanna lose 'em!" Bill leaned down until the side of his nose was flush against Dipper's, the man once more wracked with shivers when he felt hot puffs of air skate across his skin. "Jhw uhdgb iru wkh elj rqh, Slqh Wuhh!"

Dipper squeezed his eyes shut as garbled syllables struck his feverishly heated skin, anxiety flaring up with the unbearable certainty that he'd made a grave error. It was only the whisper of mania that wound around his rational thoughts that kept him from blurting out the safe word already. His thoughts shrieked past one another at unstable speeds, colliding and bursting with fear and excitement both. Their crescendo lifted and swelled, drowning out his senses until he could feel nothing at all.. or at least, until he realized he really _wasn't_ feeling anything. Shivering, Dipper cracked open an eyelid.

The sky above him had been absolved of existence; watercolor sunsets and glittering stars alike were vanished, eaten whole by the chaos that had consumed them. Where the sky once lived, only darkness remained, a swirling miasma of heat death. It was bloated and swollen with swallowed light, obscene bulges giving birth to twisted limbs and appendages. The construct glistened as if it had been submerged in petroleum jelly, a wholly unwell shine of grease and filth. The writhing flesh below it flowed like tar through the bones of the earth, a primordial sludge that spoke of inhuman malice. Dipper gaped up at the mass, its invisible shadow petrifying the marrow in his bones.

And it gazed upon him as well, with a single golden eye. An isosceles pupil marked the center of the engorged, yellowed tissue, utterly alien even for all its familiarity. He was given only a handful of stuttering heartbeats to marvel in stupefied awe before it was upon him, birthing a dozen spindly appendages that deleted the space between earth and sky to grasp at him. He choked out a yelp as a dozen firm pressures locked around his wrists, his ankles, his elbows and knees and waist and throat. The bed of plush flowers and sweet grasses was ripped away as he was suspended in the air, breaths coming in loud pants while the texture of melting wax candies pulsed against his afflicted skin.

Dipper had no time to question his ascent before he was brought before the eye, its gaze turning him inside out without even blinking. He managed a squeak of the being's name before the pupil constricted, a dozen more appendages leaking forth to meet him. They forwent restraint in favor of exploration, goosebumps rising in the wake of their icy touches. They rustled the fabric of his clothing, exuding no sense of decorum for how quickly the touches traveled further beneath his clothes. Dipper choked out a gasp as one brushed against a nipple, the flesh hardening so fast it was as if he'd been stung. The pain of such a thing was strangely absent however, leaving him only the vague familiarity of raw sensory data. Dipper shuddered out a soundless moan, feeling the grip around his throat pulse and massage the flesh.

He should have recognized the signs. A moment later something thick and pitted pressed past his lips, startling a garbled yelp from him moments before it swelled to press his tongue flat, and breach the entrance of his throat. He squeaked as something tore apart his shorts and boxers in the same moment, his already stoked arousal rising as alien limbs massaged the scarce meat of his thighs. His esophagus flexed and fluttered around the intrusion in his throat, which thankfully did nothing to trigger his sensitive gag reflex. Seemingly pleased with the grooves of his throat it pushed further, obscenely bulging the flesh around it. Dipper moaned around it as his nerves flared with sensation, his taste buds sparking from the flavor of dead stars and lost secrets.

Once more he had merely a moment to prepare himself before the intensity rose, the inquisitive touches on his thighs migrating both up and behind, his reproductive organ taken hostage by a constricting grip. He bucked uselessly into the rigid grip, unable to truly move beyond a cursory wriggling. Every flinch and tremor was steadied by the grips around his joints, which did much to prevent his full body shudder when he was abruptly penetrated. Drool spilled past his chin and dripped onto his shirt, pupils voracious and frosted with a glaze of arousal.

It was an arousal that burst into an inferno as the appendages impaling him from both ends began moving in unison, stroking and twisting and writhing deeper, deeper into his delicate internals. He could not see the fluids he dribbled stain tar black flesh, nor could he see the way a taut ring of muscle parted for a second intruder, red and flush with heat around the light consuming insertion. All he could see was the Eye, consuming his vision even as his eyelids fluttered and his eyesight blurred. It stared through his skull and into his consciousness, keeping a silent vigil amongst the fibers of his mind. He wanted it to unravel him, to pull apart every thread and smooth out every snare and cut away every tangle-

And Dipper screamed, muffled and greedy, when the appendage down his throat burst into his chest cavity, winding around ribs and tugging at the very structural integrity of his physical body. It snaked and looped in a maddening slither as the twins below filled him almost to bursting, unbearably long and writhing and squeezing the delicate nerves within him until they nearly popped. He leaked milky white like a broken faucet, his eyes rolling back in their sockets, fluttering and spinning but always in sight of the Eye, always watched and always known. He could feel himself slipping into the depths of it, pulled apart by a gravity beyond that of physical matter, transcendent and glorious in its infinite reach, its unending pull, its all consuming hunger and he hungered as well, the starvation of one to be devoured whole by-

-Dipper released a muffled shriek as the skin of his torso was pushed upwards by the tentacle writhing through his rib cage, his senses imploding in a white hot corona that left him trembling even amongst his restraints. All coherent thought faded into the background of sensory data, filling him to the brim.

"Haha wow, you sure look like you've had a good time!" Bill yelled conversationally, one hand smoothing down his tailcoats and the other straightening his hair. His teeth parted so that he could heave a hearty sigh, satisfaction welling in him. He settled into the flowerbed beside a mostly incoherent Pine Tree, and busied himself by stroking his fingers through unruly brown locks. "I didn't think you'd go for a six right out the gate, but hey, guess I was right about your adventurous spirit!" Bill grinned down at the feverishly flushed face, and stroked a thumb along the smoothed lines of Pine Tree's forehead. "Looks like a bit of stress relief did you some good, huh? That's good! Can't have you losin' your noggin when we get attacked by the space cult of Coiraptheon Nine, home of the insectean aliens that dig inside your skin and replace your skeletal structure!"  
  
Bill waited a beat before laughing, affectionately rubbing Pine Tree's scalp. "Just kidding! Those guys don't exist. Maybe. If they do, I sure don't know about it! But what I DO know is that we've got some big days ahead of us." Bill's manic grin softened slightly, and he resumed gently combing out the chaotic tangles nested atop Pine Tree's head. "Got lots of things to explore, you know. Secrets to find, monsters to kill, all that good stuff. I know you're gonna do great things, Pine Tree." Bill turned his gaze skyward, lazily tracking the twinkling green stars off in the distance. Even though he knew Pine Tree couldn't hear him, he thought better of sharing anything further. Didn't want to spook him, after all.

Instead, Bill quietly drew his favorite constellation in the sky, and relished the breathing body beside his own.  
\--  
Consciousness returned in ebbs and flows, gently rolling upon the glassy shores of Dipper's subconscious. The shards were steadily pulled into the rising tide, their jagged edges swallowed under by foamy waves. His eyelids twitched as outside stimulus finally pierced the veil, pulling him through a dreamless pinhole to unceremoniously deposit him into his own skin. "Mmnn.." The vocalization was hardly more than a reflex, a low hum of delight as his scalp was gently, firmly massaged by eight familiar digits. "Bill," he uttered more coherently, a sleepy sweetness infusing the words with warmth.

"That's the name! Well, one of, at least. Definitely the most comprehensible one." Bill's excess volume was carried off by the breeze, leaving his affectionate inflections out in the open. "I must've REALLY given you a good time if you conked out in the Mindscape. That's some doublesleep if I've ever heard it!" Bill burst into laughter at his own joke, the dissonant notes barely registering in Dipper's sleep addled mind. He could only feel the mirth and the mania, twined together into something he wanted to pluck from the air and wrap around himself.

At least until his memory sparked to life, revealing to him the events prior to his impromptu Mindscape nap. Dipper flushed up to his ears, plopping himself face first into the flowers and groaning into the soft, loamy soil underneath.

"Embarrassment! Something sorely lacking from our lovely duet, I'll have you know." Bill's face split apart with renewed laughter when he received another groan, and he watched with a spike of sadistic glee as Pine Tree curled in on himself. "Hey, lighten up! It's nothing to get your branches in a twist about. You and I just had a weird old time, right? Just like you wanted!"

Dipper extracted himself from the dirt just in time to sneeze, sending a puff of glowing petals up around him. Mabel had stopped calling his sneezes 'kittenish' when he turned eighteen, but that hadn't made them any less disproportionately petite. He attempted to force words past the heat raging under his cheeks, and carefully tuned out Bill's blatantly undisguised snickers. "I'm just not used to.. talking about stuff like that. You're the first one I've ever done anything serious with, so.. it's pretty new territory for me."

"Doesn't mean you gotta get all bashful about it," Bill retorted easily. "Sure, it's cute and all, but it's also completely unnecessary. So uh, just think of it this way; even if we weren't performing weird meat mating rituals together, I'd just find something else to make fun of you for!" Bill beamed like a radioactive isotope, pleased with his pep talk.

Dipper's knee-jerk reaction was to conjure up some bone dry, sarcastic remark, but when he thought about it... "Thanks, I think. That.. actually does kind of make me feel better." He forced himself to meet Bill's gaze head on instead of shrinking away, and pulled up a smile despite the monumental effort involved.

"See? You don't gotta worry about a thing, because I'll always be here to put your head back on when it gets all screwy!" Bill snaked an arm around Pine Tree's torso, pulling him in for some good old fashioned prolonged physical contact. "And if you WANT your head to be all screwy, I can definitely oblige!" Bill winked his Eye of Providence, and paused. He then winked his All Seeing Eye as well, just for the sheer novelty of having two winkable eyes.

Dipper took respite at Bill's side, a safe haven where he could stabilize himself with physical contact and also not be forced to hold eye contact when it was too uncomfortable. "Thanks again. I think. ...Again." He hid a sheepish smile at the sound of too-loud laughter, and focused on formulating his thoughts. "I wanted to ask you, about... getting weird," he coughed, still a little unsure. "That-... whatever you turned into, is that.. have you been that before?"

"Technically. Probably?" Bill wrinkled his nose, lips turning down in a moment of frustration. "Yeah, probably at some point in my inter-dimensional dealings, before the whole Nightmare Realm business. I've had a lot of forms, kiddo, triangular just happens to be au naturael. It's a lot like this skin suit, really; it's sometimes important for me to fit in with the local flavor, when I'm trying to manipulate. Or, was."

Dipper hummed in thought, studying the side of Bill's face for a moment. It was one that had been burned into his retinas for more than one reason over the past months, but he could still picture the familiar snappily suited triangle in his place. Anything else, however... "So, in the Mindscape... you transform so easily because it's your domain, right? Master of the Mind?"

"Aww, you remembered!" Bill pretended to wipe a tear from his eye, and snickered when Pine Tree nudged him with an elbow. "Yeah, pretty much. I mean, with my full power unleashed in reality I could have changed my form to whatever I wanted as well, but the Mindscape is familiar territory. It's easy stuff, even in my current state."

Dipper nodded, thoughts revving up in his head and nerves jittering beneath his skin. He bit his lip, attempting to carefully phrase his next question. "So... back during the.. first summer, we could conjure stuff in the Mindscape as well. I was wondering.. with enough focus, could I transform as well? Because if it follows the same principles, then theoretically I could be... anything, right? Anything I can imagine. The same way you do it."

Bill's lips twisted uncertainly as he processed the inquiry. He drummed his fingers on a knee, gazing upwards. "Sure, you COULD transform yourself into some kinda abstract horror concoction if you really wanted, but it works different for me. Humans have a sense of identity that's really hard to let go of, and a huge part of that is what they look like. Sure, they might get a haircut, or gain some weight, or change their wardrobe, but generally they always see the same dopey face in the mirror every day. Your avatar in the Mindscape is your perception of self. For a multiverse class demon like myself, the only thing I absolutely need is a motif to fall back on. One tiny thing that ties it all together," Bill glanced back at Pine Tree and winked his Eye of Providence, the golden light flaring momentarily, "but for a human with delicate psychology... it might make you all screwy in the head. And I mean 'unable to form coherent thoughts or make sounds other than screaming' kinda screwy."

"..." Dipper made a noncommittal noise, his slowly stoking enthusiasm sufficiently snuffed out. "I understand. Thanks for letting me know, at least." Dipper held back a sigh, attempting to simultaneously shove back his disappointment and convince himself that he had merely held a scientific curiosity towards transforming in the Mindscape (To see a face not his own, to see _her_ face, to see _any_ face that wasn't his, that he didn't hate) and nothing else.

Bill's gaze flickered down to read the sloping of Pine Tree's mouth, and puzzled out a fairly likely assessment of the issue. "Listen kid, it's better not to think about that stuff. Just because I can transform into all kinds of things doesn't mean that, at the end of the day, I'm not still Bill Cipher. It'd be the same for you." He waited a beat before knocking his leg against Pine Tree's, drawing his gaze. "So don't worry about all that, okay? Besides..."

"Your face is the only one I want to see on you."


	14. One Moment

Dipper Pines slipped seamlessly from the grasp of the Mindscape, his misaligned REM cycles sputtering out to allow surface level consciousness to leak out. The call of the waking world was soft and sweet, bringing with it the muffled sound of city life and a coating of pale grey sunlight. It enveloped him in a facsimile of warmth, seeping through the covers to tick his internal clock. His eyes slid open, slow and languid, unmarred by the exhaustion that so often tugged them low-

"BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP I'M AN ALARM CLOCK PINE TREE YOU HAVE TO WAKE UP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP-" The illusion of a peaceful morning was pulverized into dust and ground under the heel of a shiny loafer as Bill shrieked at the top of his lungs, his impression of an alarm clock more akin to a foghorn being blasted through a megaphone.

Dipper screamed a high note as he was jolted by the noise, the shock causing a full body flinch so powerful that he tumbled gracelessly out of bed and slammed into the carpet. "Oh good, you're up!" The demon's cheerful greeting earned a miserable groan from the prone human, who feebly attempted to rub the ringing from his ears. "Up and at 'em, kid! We've got tons of important stuff to do today!"

"Was one of them visiting an EMT to check for ruptured eardrums?" Dipper droned, his voice a little too loud in an effort to speak over the ringing. "I think I have tinnitus now."

"C'mon, it wasn't THAT loud," Bill denied, casually stepping one foot to the left to obscure the crack running through the sliding glass door. That'd probably been there already. "Besides, how else was I supposed to make sure you woke up? You've got your thing about actual alarm clocks, so obviously I couldn't rely on one of those."

Dipper slowly sat upright, digging a finger into his ear and pulling it out to carefully inspect. "I think that's- that's blood, I'm bleeding. You ruptured my eardrum."

Bill snorted, and cupped a hand around his ear with an exaggerated expression of concentration. "Hey, you know what, I think I've got some damage too; I just keep hearing the same whining noise, over and over!"

"Shut up, Bill."

"Sorry, what was that? Didn't quite catch it."  
\--  
Dipper squinted as the rays of the morning sun bled over the squat, sloped rooftops of the buildings arond them. He took a step to the right in an attempt to utilize some of Bill's shade. "You know, it's customary for the first day of a vacation to be spent on relaxation and acclimatization."

"Ha ha wow customs, I've sure made a point of adhering to THOSE, haven't I?" Bill's voice rang through the narrow streets they walked, partially swallowed up by the steady buzz of foot traffic around them. There was a peculiar lack of conversation, most of the bodies moving around them silent save for their footfalls. "Besides, our room is boring, there's nothing to do up there! The real action is out here."

Dipper shrunk a few inches further into Bill's shadow, discomfited by the surrounding individuals whom were clearly on their way to places of employment. Gravity Falls was the only town he'd ever spent significant time in where people actually walked around, and it was so far removed from the 'normal' world that he had trouble even comparing it to anything else. At least in Gravity Falls he had known the people around him, and had actually been capable of speaking their language. "We could have ordered room service, and watched movies on my laptop."

"We can do that at home! Well, except for the room service part, I guess. But that's irrelevant, because everyone knows room service can't be trusted! They're like vampires; once you invite them in, you can't get rid of 'em! Except instead of sucking your blood, they sneak in when you're asleep and put leeches under your eyelids! I've seen it a hundred times." Rather than acknowledging Pine Tree's burgeoning noises of disbelief, Bill steered them down a turn into a cramped little street that was home to numerous restaurants marked by signs that surely glowed with bright neon colors when the sun went down. "Ooh, this place looks promising!"

Dipper was given no reprieve in which to complain before he was being dragged into a modestly sized cafe. The architecture was fairly open and modern, containing a dozen small tables, a planked wooden counter, and a small display case of breakfast pastries. Several geographical posters were set up alongside what Dipper assumed to be menus, and there was a fair sized globe sitting on the corner of the front counter. His reflexive protest was sufficiently quenched by the aroma of coffee beans and freshly made pastries. "I'm surprised you'd take us anywhere that you can't eat whole squids."

"Obviously I'm saving that for dinner! Can't have the big finale without a buildup, now can I?" Bill presumably winked behind his eye patch before he swaggered up to the counter, where he proceeded to order for the both of them in unnecessarily loud English. He looked almost disappointed when the woman behind the counter proved to be sufficiently fluent, but made no move to start eating her head or whispering nightmares into her ears.

Satisfied with the demon's good behavior, Dipper quietly secured them a table that wasn't in view of the front windows. He studied the maps on the walls from afar (silently proud that he had bothered to get new glasses before the trip) and eventually found a map of Kyoto itself. He squinted in an effort to make out names of landmarks, before realizing that they were all labeled in Kanji. Dipper knew he should have convinced Ford to let him take the Lingual Lens, three years ago. Although, the trade-off of vision vs. understanding foreign writings was a bit of a tough one to make, considering his normal field of vision was limited to around a foot before most things became illegible.

"Thinkin' hard or hardly thinkin'? HA! I think I already know the answer." Dipper blinked out of his thoughts when the chair across from his screeched over tile, before being occupied by a grinning Bill Cipher. "Since your tastes are awful I ordered for you; you can thank me later." Bill slid a glossy coffee cup across the table, along with a tray of granola, sweet breads, and yogurt.

"Thanks for ordering actual food, I guess." Dipper suspiciously swirled around his granola, looking for any signs of possible sawdust or dead insects. He didn't _really_ think Bill would put inedibles in his food, but there was no being absolutely sure. "..Looks good," he eventually concluded, mixing up a spoonful of granola and yogurt. His first bite proved that there wasn't even a single maggot or spider inside, and he flashed a grateful smile at the demon, flushing when he received a blinding grin in return.

"I mean, I would have ordered food that doesn't actually exist, but unfortunately this cafe has to operate within the natural laws of the universe." Bill stuffed an espresso brownie laden with fruits and nuts in his mouth, sentencing it to a terrible fate.

"I think you'll find that most cafes run into that same issue." Dipper smiled into his mug, taking a cautious sip only to be pleasantly surprised by currents of honey and cinnamon. Why couldn't he have coffee like that _all_ the time? It was obviously because he used instant coffee on the mornings when he could even be bothered to make it, but the sentiment of sweet, smooth coffee was a hard one to let go of. "Do you have anything else planned for today? Other than eating live squid, I guess."

"I'm sure you know by now that 'planning' isn't really my thing. So basically we're just gonna run around and check out whatever looks interesting." Bill quirked an eyebrow when he earned a skeptical glance. "What? You don't think I'm capable of doing stuff that isn't ridiculous and weird? I think I can handle one afternoon of relative mundanity before we crack down on the good stuff!" Bill's tone was boastful and swimming with confidence, which was immensely undermined by the nervous tick that had developed under his eye. He plastered his grin on more firmly, and pressed a finger against the rebellious muscle to force it into stillness. "Totally fine!"

"You don't have to lie for my sake, you know," Dipper mumbled into a bite of bread, his gaze carefully turned a few degrees askew of Bill's eye. "If you want to do weird stuff, we can. I'm just not sure how much weirdness we'll find out here."

"Listen Pine Tree, this is OUR trip, not MY trip. I want to treat you to all the 'normal' stuff you're interested in." Bill's sweet sentiment brought a flush back to Dipper's face, before the demon swiftly tore it to shreds. "And then once we're done getting your lame human stuff out of the way, we can finally do interesting things!"

"Gee, thanks." Dipper rolled his eyes and downed another sip of coffee, intent on sucking up enough caffeine to bolster himself against Bill's nonsense. "Either way, the whole point of this trip is to investigate supernatural happenings, so trust me when I say I don't mind not walking around old, dusty temples that aren't filled with... damned spirits, or whatever."

"Geez, I should'a worn rain boots because you are just FLOODING the place with your cultural mindfulness. Also too bad, we've got a festival to go to tomorrow and it lasts all day." Bill snagged a handful of granola from Pine Tree's bowl, and crunched on it pointedly.

Dipper slid his remaining granola out of the demon's reach, guarding it with one arm. "Festival? What are you talking about? What _kind_  of festival?" He very gracefully ignored Bill's retort of 'A Japanese one, duh!' and fished out his phone. "It's the twenty first, Bill. Halloween isn't for over a week. Is this some other thing you didn't tell me about?"

"Obviously! Where's the fun in you being informed? It's much more entertaining to watch you scramble around." Bill raised both hands to ward off the glare directed at him, his grotesque grin never slipping. "Don't give me that look, it's not a big deal. Just some historical festival where people dress up like farmers and samurai, or whatever. If you want I could probably get you a geisha outfit-" Bill snatched the slice of bread tossed at him with his teeth, laughter spilling out around it.

"Yeah, we're done here." Dipper rose from his seat in what he had planned to be a smooth motion, but his foot got caught on the leg of the chair and he stumbled slightly. He staunchly ignored Bill's renewed laughter, and strolled purposefully through the cafe's exit.

The bell dinged behind him, its tinny ring fading into obscurity, swallowed up by the cacophonous soundscape of whining, garbled laughter that resonated through every particle of Dipper's physical makeup. He stared with wide, quivering pupils at the meat soaked nightmare that had eaten the world beneath his soles and blotted out the sky with fractals of toxic, dizzying color. Vague constructs surrounded him, pulsing with tortured life and poorly shaped into a mockery of buildings. Gaping, enamel lined orifices opened up periodically throughout the flesh coating, and glistening black eyes stared down from within.

His breathing was nonexistent, organs still as stone and yet the taste of steaming rot still clung to the inside of his mouth, seeping into his throat and filling his chest cavity with a gelatinous weight. He moved without thought, footsteps squelching as they popped pockets of fat and infected fluids, a putrid stench rising from the opened pustules. He showed no outward reaction as a sucking pressure tugged wetly at his shoe, anchoring him in place as the sickening heat encapsulated everything below his ankle.

But it was a mere afterthought, in the face of what oozed towards him. Bill Bill Bill >B͏͝I̧̧͜L̴̷͜͏L̷͝. The golden demon vomited a mouthful of steaming breath over Dipper's cheeks, his mouth crooked and uneven. Everything about him was asymmetrical, from his lopsided skull to his one dripping eye, golden fluids spilling down his broken face. A nauseating yellowed light seeped up through his paper thin flesh, crusty black aberrations spilling forth a stomach churning corona of flashing light. His bloated lips fell apart and teeth spilled out, his unbroken laughter pouring forth in a blackened sludge.

Dipper felt a hundred fingers tear between his ribs, snapping the bones outwards so he could spread his w͐͆̅͋i͆̌̇̅͝n͛̐̔g̛̋s̸ͧ̿ͥ̍̐̎̏ never ask the blackbird why the canary yellow s͜͏̶͘͡i̶͠n̡͝͠g̛҉̢͜͡s̵̛͏ bones of glass and broken beak the feathers stained with b̢͢͡l̸̕̕͡o̷͏o̵̵͞d͡ yoU'̷R̸̕͡Ȩ̛ ̕҉͏Ņ̶̛̕O҉͞T̴̕H̡͢͜͏͠I̛͞҉N̴͞G̶̴̡͢ ̵͡B̵̶̵U͜͠T͟͡҉͜ ̵͢͜͝A͜ ͘͟͝͠W̧̛͞͏O̸R̛͞M̵̷̡̕̕ ̸̧W͢R̴̡̢͢͟I̴̷T̷̨̛͘͟H̢̕͜͡I̡̛͞N̵G҉̡͘͢ ̷̢̧I̧N͏̡̛͝ ͟͞͝T̶̛H͞E͝͝͏ ͏͘͠M̶͟͢Ų̕͜D̷̕-͘̕  
\--  
"-ellooooo, Pine Treeeeee! Jeez, for a might conifer you sure aren't very firmly rooted-" Dipper blinked suddenly, startled by the sight of Bill peering inquisitively at him from only a few inches away. "Well, look who's back in reality! Reality being subjective of course, considering nothing actually exists-"

"What? What am..why..?" Dipper glanced around the demon's outrageously large grin, reorienting himself with the Kyoto side street they were standing on. He could distantly hear cars and songbirds, and he absently licked at the inside of his teeth to find the taste of coffee stained on them. "Sorry, I guess I spaced out," he appeased Bill after another moment of consideration, not looking directly at the demon.

"You sure did, kid! You do realize that carbon based lifeforms ain't exactly suited to ventures out into the vacuum of outer space, right?" Bill's teasing comment didn't garner even a hint of a reaction, Pine Tree's slightly dazed expression still lingering. "You feeling alright? We can go back to the room if you want, and I'll just bring some live squid up later so I can eat them in front of you."

Dipper reacted a little more strongly to the note of concern behind Bill's permanent levity, his eyes refocusing and lips pulling up into a slightly unsure smile. "Yeah-yeah I'm fine. I just.. had a weird feeling for a moment. We can keep looking around for a while, because I strongly doubt that the hotel staff will let us bring live squid into the room."

"OBVIOUSLY that's why we keep it a secret! Geez, don't you know how to break the rules by now, Pine Tree?" Seemingly mollified by the wobbly reassurance, Bill's teasing tone came back in full force. He laughed piercingly loud when an elbow knocked into his arm, his teeth gleaming at the sound of an exasperated huff. "Fine, fine, we'll do it the boring way. I hope one day you reflect on this moment and realize how much I'm sacrificing for you."

"I'm sure the thought of you abstaining from getting us kicked out of our hotel will bring me to tears," Dipper droned, his lips curving without his say-so. The unease curdling his gut was swiftly ignored, and he took the demon's hand to lead him further down the street.

When Bill eventually did swallow a live, squirming squid later that evening, he ended up having to hold back Dipper's hair while he threw up in the bushes.

 


End file.
